The Flexner Report
The Flexner Report, in conjunction with the changes already underway in medical education, substantially improved the quality of health care available to the American public and paved the way for later advances in health care. However, these changes in medical education also had some more problematic results. The closure of so many schools made medicine as a field even more homogeneous because only two medical schools for African Americans and one for women survived. In addition, few immigrants, minorities, and poorer whites could afford the tuition for university-based medical schools or meet their strict educational prerequisites. Moreover, many of these schools openly discriminated against women, African Americans, Jews, and Catholics. Thus, even though the technical quality of medical care increased, fewer doctors were available who would practice in minority communities and who understood the special concerns of minority or female patients. At the same time, simply because doctors were now more homogeneously white, male, and upper class, their status grew, encouraging more hierarchical relationships between doctors and patients.
