Profession
Study finds unequal treatment for patients with chest pain
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted Feb. 26, 2007
Black men are 25% to 30% less likely than nonblack men to receive the most common diagnostic tests when reporting to the emergency department with chest pain, according to a study of six years of national hospital data published in the February Academic Emergency Medicine.
The examination of 7,068 patients from 1995 to 2000 also found that gender and insurance status affected how often patients reporting chest pain received electrocardiography, chest radiography tests or oxygen saturation monitoring and cardiac monitoring. For example, black women were 17% less likely than nonblack men to receive cardiac monitoring, and patients without private insurance were 13% less likely to receive chest radiography than patients with commercial insurance.
The data were drawn from the National Hospital Ambulatory Health Care Survey of Emergency Depts. and corresponded to 32 million visits nationally throughout the period examined.
Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2007/02/26/prbf0226.htm.
