Equity in Health Care: A Field Experiment on the Effect of Socioeconomic Status on Access to Outpatient Care

Inequality in access to health care may have different underlying reasons. Employing a randomised field experiment, we study the impact of socioeconomic status on health care access varying the patient’s educational level. We find that practice assistants favor patients with a degree over those without a degree in whether they offer an appointment. Physicians, in contrast, favor patients with a degree with respect to response time to the request for an appointment and in terms of waiting time. We argue that our results are consistent with implicit bias for practice assistants and statistical discrimination based on financial incentives for physicians.