Race, Gender and Insurance Affect ER Care

Race, gender and insurance differences factor strongly in the evaluation of patients with chest pain seen in U.S. emergency departments.

Liliana E. Pezzin of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and Dr. Gary B. Green and Penelope Keyl of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore say chest pain is the most common initial symptom in patients diagnosed with coronary artery disease.

African-American women were also 17 percent less likely to undergo cardiac monitoring, 14 percent less likely to have oxygen saturation monitoring and 6 percent less likely to have chest radiography tests than non-African-American men. Similarly, the rate of testing was lower for non-African-American women than it was for non-African-American men.

Patients covered by forms of insurance other than commercial insurance were approximately 13 percent less likely to undergo electrocardiography, according to the study published in Academic Emergency Medicine.