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.
I feel like I have been hearing about this for a decade and yet no one has pinpointed the cause according to the article. Weird.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2576060/
“In both the bivariate and multivariable models, black race was a significant variable associated with underestimation of pain by physicians”