The Disastrous Push to Resegregate Health Care: A flawed study spurs a retrograde trend in medicine that will lead to worse outcomes.

Racial segregation is returning to health care, driven by a new generation of woke activists. The seminal study advocating this backward policy was released in June 2018 and revised three years ago this month. Titled “Does Diversity Matter For Health: Experimental Evidence from Oakland” and published in the American Economic Review, it argued that matching black patients with black physicians would save lives. The medical establishment immediately took up the banner of “racial concordance” between physicians and patients.

But the Oakland study is fatally flawed. In a new analysis, we show the shortcuts and un-scientific methods its authors used. No sound evidence supports resegregating health care, and taking this dangerous road will surely lead to worse health outcomes.

It’s important to realize how the Oakland study is reshaping health care, starting with the push for diversity in medical education and training. There aren’t enough minority physicians to make racial concordance a reality—so to get more nonwhite physicians, medical schools are ditching the MCAT for some minority students, while trainee assessments are being changed to minimize the documented differences in performance between white and so-called underrepresented minorities. These policies require lower standards, a direct threat to patient health.

Medical providers are also moving toward racial concordance. A February 2021 leak showed that UnitedHealth Group, the largest health-insurance company in America, supports matching patients with physicians based on their race. Activists are pushing hospitals and policymakers to follow suit. Yet these measures inherently undermine trust—a key part of health care—between patients and physicians with different skin colors.

The Oakland study does not justify this campaign. The authors conclude that racial concordance would lead to better health screening, leading to “a 19 percent reduction in the black-white male cardiovascular mortality gap and an 8 percent decline in the black-white male life expectancy gap.” The authors admit, however, that these are “back of the envelope calculations.” They should have designed a better study.