Whites More Likely To Get Narcotics In Emergency Room, Study Shows

CHICAGO — 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 American regions, and for every type of pain.

"The gaps between whites and nonwhites have not appeared to close at all," a study co-author, Dr. Mark Pletcher of the University of California, San Francisco, said.

The study appears in today's Journal of the American Medical Association. Prescribing narcotics for pain in emergency rooms rose during the study, from 23% of those complaining of pain in 1993 to 37% in 2005.

The increase coincided with changing attitudes among doctors who now regard pain management as a key to healing.