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Don Finley: Building more Hispanic docs



This from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics and published in the Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education magazine.

Why is this important? Statistics are a bit fuzzy, but the American Medical Association estimated there were 813,770 physicians in the United States in the year 2000. And the National Hispanic Medical Association estimates there are 36,000 licensed Hispanic physicians. That’s a small slice of the pie any way you look at it.

Some studies have connected the number of Hispanic doctors and the quality of care that Hispanic patients get. Hispanics are most likely to be uninsured, and are at high risk for chronic diseases, especially diabetes. Advocacy groups emphasize the idea of culturally competent care, which in large part means making people comfortable enough to seek medical care, and providing medical advice people can understand and follow.

San Antonio’s medical school handed 34 medical degrees to Hispanic students last year. Tied for second place were the UT Medical Branch at Galveston and the UT Health Science Center at Houston. Each conferred 28.

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