Health Care Perceptions and a Concierge-Based Transplant Evaluation for Patients with Kidney Disease

Abstract

Importance: The kidney transplant (KT) evaluation process is particularly time consuming and burdensome for Black patients, who report more discrimination, racism, and mistrust in health care than White patients. Whether alleviating patient burden in the KT evaluation process may improve perceptions of health care and enhance patients' experiences is important to understand. Objective: To investigate whether Black and White participants would experience improvements in perceptions of health care after undergoing a streamlined, concierge-based approach to KT evaluation. Design, Setting, and Participants: This prospective cohort study from a single urban transplant center included Black and White English-speaking adults who were referred for KT and deemed eligible to proceed with the KT evaluation process. The patients responded to baseline and follow-up questionnaires. The study was conducted from May 2015 to June 2018. Questionnaires were collected before KT evaluation initiation (baseline) and after KT evaluation completion (follow-up). Data were analyzed from October 2022 to January 2024. Exposure: Data were stratified by race (Black compared with White) and time (baseline compared with follow-up). Main Outcomes and Measures: The main outcomes were experiences of discrimination in health care, perceived racism in health care, medical mistrust of health care systems, and trust in physician. Repeated-measures regression was used to assess race, time, and the race-by-time interaction as factors associated with each outcome. Results: The study included 820 participants (mean [SD] age, 56.50 [12.93] years; 514 [63%] male), of whom 205 (25%) were Black and 615 (75%) were White. At baseline and follow-up, Black participants reported higher discrimination (119 [58%]; χ21= 121.89; P