cbs5.com - Study: Whites Get Pain Meds More Than Minorities: CHICAGO (AP) ― Emergency room doctors are prescribing strong narcotics more often to patients who complain of pain, but minorities are less likely to get them than whites, a new study finds.
Even for the severe pain of kidney stones, minorities were prescribed narcotics such as oxycodone and morphine less frequently than whites.
The analysis of more than 150,000 emergency room visits over 13 years found differences in prescribing by race in both urban and rural hospitals, in all U.S. regions and for every type of pain.
'The gaps between whites and nonwhites have not appeared to close at all,' said study co-author Dr. Mark Pletcher of the University of California, San Francisco.
