Minority Patients Less Likely Than White Patients to Receive Pain Medication from EMS

Emergency medical service (EMS) providers may give different care to minority patients than white patients, according to a study published December 1, 2018, in BMJ Open Quality. Researchers performed a quantitative analysis of more than 100,000 medical charts from 63 EMS agencies in Oregon from 2015 through 2017, measuring receipt of pain medication, patient race, and other control variables including EMS provider impression, pain severity, and socioeconomic status covariates. The researchers found that black patients were 40% less likely to receive pain medication compared with white patients and Asian patients were 36% less likely to receive medication.