White people who visit hospital emergency departments with pain are 26% more likely than Black people to be given opioid pain medications such as morphine. This was a key finding from our recent study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. We also found that Black patients were 25% more likely than white patients to be given only non-opioid painkillers such as ibuprofen, which are typically available over the counter.
It’s wild how slow the medical profession is to adopt core changes in technology. You still see paper files, fax machines, resistance to email; outright allergy to SMS, shitty web portals, phone systems that take ten minutes to navigate, dictaphones.