Patient and Provider Concordance: Do Patients Prefer Physicians of Their Own Race or Ethnicity?

Understanding whether patients' preferences for physicians are influenced by racial or ethnic concordance is crucial for balancing patient care satisfaction and health care workforce diversity.

To investigate whether patients' preferences for physicians are influenced by racial or ethnic concordance and whether these preferences are reflected in the availability of physicians by race.

A patient-focused randomized online experiment was conducted to evaluate preferences for physicians while a physician-focused randomized field experiment was conducted to evaluate physician availability by race. The patient-focused experiment involved respondents selecting primary care physicians, while the physician-focused field experiment was conducted on a random sample of primary care physicians in Texas, which reports physician race.

White respondents preferred White physicians by 10 percentage points (ppts) (95% CI: 0.048-0.157, P <0.01). Hispanic respondents favored Hispanic physicians by 27 ppts (95% CI: 0.148-0.398, P <0.01) while Black respondents favored Black physicians by 15 ppts (95% CI: -0.013 to 0.395, P =0.07). Overall, White physicians were preferred by 4.8 ppts (95% CI: 0.004-0.092, P =0.030) at the expense of Asian physicians, who were less preferred by 9.2 ppts (95% CI: -0.187 to 0.003, P =0.06). These findings are consistent with the physician-focused field experiment where Asian physicians offered appointments 3 days sooner than White providers (95% CI: -6.1 to 0.1 days, P =0.05).

We find that concordance preferences for physicians varied by race. Some patients may be dissatisfied if these preferences are not met while some physicians may face unequal employment outcomes if they are met.