BiasHigh
Optum Algorithmic Health Risk Scores Reportedly Underestimated Black Patients' Needs
- Occurred
- Oct 24, 2019
- Published
- Oct 28, 2019
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
Researchers analyzing an Optum algorithm used by a large academic hospital reportedly found evidence that it tended to under-predict the health care needs of Black patients, which in turn appeared to result in lower prioritization for extra care programs compared with white patients exhibiting similar health profiles.
Developers
- Optum
Deployers
- unnamed large academic hospital
Harmed parties
- Black patients
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: Algorithmic bias in healthcare leads to disparate treatment of Black patients, constituting a significant harm incident.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8