SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Attorney General Rob Bonta sailed to victory in the Nov. 8 election, riding his progressive record on reproductive rights, gun control and social justice reform. As he charts a course for his next four years, the 50-year-old Democrat wants to target racial discrimination in health care, including through an investigation of software programs and decision-making tools used by hospitals to treat patients.
Bonta, the first Filipino American to serve as the state’s top prosecutor, asked 30 hospital CEOs in August for a list of the commercial software programs their facilities use to support clinical decisions, schedule operating rooms and guide billing practices. In exchange, he offered them confidentiality. His goal, Bonta told KHN, is to identify algorithms that may direct more attention and resources to white patients than to minorities, widening racial disparities in health care access, quality and outcomes.
“Unequal access to our health care system needs to be combated and reversed, not carried forward and propagated, and algorithms have the power to do either,” Bonta said.
