Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: In 2010, an estimated population of the 311,212,863 Americans generated approximately 1,014,688,290 physician office encounters (Moore, 2010).The frequency and number of professional interactions between caregivers and patients/family members in medical office settings equated to a staggering 1,931 visits per minute.Based on the massive volume of interactions that occurred between patients of different races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic standings that generated an average household income of $49,445 in 2010 (United States Census Bureau, 2010a) with a physician workforce that the Association of American Medical Colleges (2010) captured as being 75% White that earned (primary care specialties) in excess of $190,000 per year in personal income (Hyden, 2011), a paradigm for potential discrimination is created through heterogeneous customers seeking health care services from a mostly affluent homogeneous workforce.What are the experiences of the underinsured in attempting to obtain routine and emergent medical care in the United States?Based on the identified void in the current body of scholarship that leaves silent the voices of millions of underserved and socioeconomically disadvantaged patients, this dissertation will extend the muted voices and, thus, create a platform to learn through the patients' personal contexts and unique health stories.
Author: Thomas Crawford
Institution: Antioch University
Language: English
Subfield: Health
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1559055233