Massachusetts Mandates Ideology for Doctors

Massachusetts doctors are being force-fed radical and divisive ideology. That’s the reality of a new mandate from the state Board of Registration in Medicine. 

Beginning June 1, 2022, any doctors applying for or renewing a medical license must complete courses on “implicit bias in healthcare.” When this mandate goes into effect, doctors will be pressured into focusing on their patients’ skin color and making care decisions based on racial groups, not individual medical needs. It also completely ignores that doctors already have a code of ethics that spurs them to treat their patients with the personalized care they deserve.

Here are the details. Massachusetts is demanding that current or future doctors take two credits of continuing medical education grounded in activist ideas. The board provides three approved courses that doctors can choose from, two of which are necessary to fulfilling the requirement. The list includes courses entitled “Unconscious Bias in Medicine” and “Reflecting on Health Disparities and Moving Towards Anti-Racism in Medicine.” 

The former course, offered by Stanford, has no basis in medical science. It promises to help doctors discover their “unconscious bias in everyday interactions with patients, students, colleagues, and team members.” It also recommends the Implicit Bias Test, a Harvard tool that has been discredited and even criticized by its creators.

The latter course is no better. It is focused on helping doctors “provide care that is more consciously equitable,” yet in practice, that means making care decisions based on race. The name for that is discrimination, which anti-racism explicitly demands.

Massachusetts is wrong to force these dangerous and disproven ideas on doctors. The state’s doctors should learn about better ways to care for patients, not how to become radical activists.