WASHINGTON (AP) April 20, 2004 - Hispanics, Asians and blacks are more likely than whites to have difficulty communicating with doctors and accessing health care, a study says.

Minorities believed they would receive better care if they were of a different race, according to the survey released Wednesday by the Commonwealth Fund, a private New York-based health research foundation.

"For almost every measure of quality, there is a sharp division between the health care experiences of white and minority Americans,'' said Karen Davis, the group's president. "As our population grows more diverse, these findings send a clear warning that the health care quality divide is in danger of turning into a gulf.''

Hispanics, the nation's fastest-growing minority, were more than twice as likely as whites -- 33 percent vs. 16 percent -- to cite communication problems, such as failing to understand the doctor or feeling the doctor did not listen to them.

Twenty-seven percent of Asians and 23 percent of black people said they have experienced similar communication difficulties.

Access to language interpreters also was limited. Among non-English speakers who said they needed interpreters during a health care visit, fewer than half said they always or usually had one.

The survey was taken by Princeton Survey Research Associates from April to November last year. Researchers conducted telephone interviews with random nationally representative sample of 6,722 people age 18 and older. The sample included 3,488 whites, 1,153 Hispanics, 1,037 blacks and 669 Asians. The error margin for the total sample is plus or minus 1.5 percentage points, larger for subgroups.

One in six blacks, one in seven Hispanics and one in 10 Asians said they felt they would receive better health care if they were of a different race. Only 1 percent of whites felt that way.

Both blacks and whites reported getting more preventive care than Hispanics and Asians.

For instance, among those age 50 and older, 18 percent of Hispanics and 16 percent of Asians said they had been screened for colon cancer in the past year. Among blacks, 31 percent said they had been screened, and 28 percent of whites said they had been screened.