Study finds racial disparity in emergency department opioid prescriptions

The team's results show that black patients who visit emergency rooms with back and abdominal pain are significantly less likely to receive opioid prescriptions than white patients with the same pain level. These conditions are referred to as 'non-definitive conditions' as they do not have a clear clinical presentation, and are often difficult to diagnose. It is important to note that no difference was found for visits pertaining to fractures, kidney stones or toothaches. Given the prescription opioid epidemic throughout the country, physicians and hospitals are under increased pressure to be vigilant when prescribing such medications. As such, doctors may be relying on subjective cues such as race when prescribing opioids for pain-related conditions.
The researchers conducted their experiment using the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS). Examining medications prescribed and administered in emergency departments over a five-year period from 2007 -- 2011, they discovered a significant difference in the likelihood of receiving opioid prescriptions for white versus black patients. No previous studies have examined such imbalances in opioid prescriptions at emergency department visits.
These results show that blacks who visit the emergency department with vague pain-related conditions, are less likely to receive an opioid prescription than white patients, likely because blacks are more often stereotyped as a drug-seeker. Such discrimination could lead to an increase in existing racial disparities in health and pain-control. In addition, recent studies show a greater prevalence of drug abuse among whites. These discriminatory prescription practices could be a contributing factor.
"Access to healthcare and pain management decisions should be made without regards to patients' race-ethnicity. Health care providers need to be sensitized to their inherent biases, so that they can consciously avoid these biases from affecting their practice behavior," Dr. Singhal said in the article.
In addition to the racial disparities in pain treatment for vague pain-related conditions, this research raises a perplexing question as to whether it is black patients who are being under-prescribed, or are white patients being over-prescribed? While black patients do not benefit from such biases, an unintended consequence might be that they are at a lower risk of developing an addiction to opioids because they receive fewer opioid prescriptions.



for more information visit our product website:Buy Vidalista 20 mg Online 
Location: United States

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alcohol advertising linked to adolescent drinking

These findings support the demand for legal restrictions of the amount of alcohol marketing in the European Union, where the Audio Visual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) is the only EU regulation currently in place. The AVMSD regulates the content of alcohol marketing in audiovisual media but does not restrict the amount of alcohol marketing on TV or elsewhere. The study included more than 9,000 adolescents in Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Poland. The average age was 14 years. The students reported their drinking frequency and binge drinking as well as their exposure to a wide range of alcohol marketing, including television ads; online marketing; sponsorship of sports, music events, or festivals; ownership of alcohol branded promotional items; receipt of free samples; and exposure to price offers. The data showed that exposure to alcohol marketing o f all kinds was positively associated with adolescents' alcohol use over time. This link was found in four countries of v
Read more

Highly curative hep C treatment safe, effective for drug users

Up to 170 million people worldwide have hepatiti s C virus (HCV) infection and injection drug use is a major risk factor. While the once-daily dosing, low side-effects profile, and shortened treatment duration of interferon-free direct-acting antivirals are ideal for injection drug users, most trials of these therapies for HCV have excluded persons with recent injection drug use. The CO-STAR (Hepatitis C Patients on Opioid Substitution Therapy Antiviral Response) trial sought to evaluate the efficacy and safety of elbasvir-grazoprevir for injection drug users. Researchers assigned 301 treatment-naive patients with chronic HCV genotype 1, 4, or 6 infection who were at least 80 percent adherent to visits for opioid-agonist therapy to immediate treatment with elbasvir-grazoprevir for 12 weeks, or deferred treatment with placebo for 12 weeks, then open-label elbasvir-grazoprevir for 12 weeks. They found that 91.5 percent of the patients in the immediate treatment group achieved susta
Read more

Preventing dependency when patients first receive opioids: Say no to refills

A substantial increase in opioid prescriptions over the past two decades in the US has gone hand-in-hand with a significant rise in overdoses and addiction treatment. These trends have prompted calls for the more selective use of opioids for medical reasons. Deyo's team wanted to shed light on how much and for how long opioids can be prescribed for the first time to so-called opioid-naïve patients without their inadvertently becoming long-term users. They focused their attention on Oregon, the US state with the highest rate of non-medical opioid users in a 2012 survey. One year's data was obtained from Oregon's prescription monitoring program about outpatient prescriptions filled for controlled substances, including opioids, at all non-state or non-federal retail pharmacies. Data from Oregon vital records and a statewide hospital discharge registry were also included. Deyo's team began with data from 3.6 million opioid prescriptions filled for 874,765 patients. Of t
Read more