Racial disparities in emergency rooms - white girls may be getting less comprehensive services

Emergency physicians may be providing less comprehensive services for white teen girls than black, according to Carolyn Holland, M.D., M.Ed., a pediatric emergency medicine fellow at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Cente, but it isn't racism. Or it is, depending on how you look at things. The reason for different treatment levels is that physicians are more likely to document sexual histories of black adolescent girls with symptoms potentially related to sexually transmitted infections (STI) than white teen girls with the same symptoms.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control data show that black teen girls have a higher incidence of STIs and sexual activity than white girls. As a result, when symptoms are present, black teen girls get asked more. It's not standard care to document sexual histories more or less frequently for one group than another, according to Holland.

"We typically see racial disparities that result in poor-quality health care for non-whites," says Holland. "In this situation, we're doing white patients a disservice by not asking whether they've had sex. The simple fact is that any girl of any race who comes to a hospital for emergency care – or to her primary care physician for that matter – should be asked whether they're having sex. We're not doing a good job of that."

In her study, Holland examined 352 emergency visits. Ninety-one percent of black teens had their sexual history documented. Only 62 percent of white teens had their sexual history taken.

Holland also is an emergency physician at the University of Cincinnati. The study was presented Tuesday, May 4, at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Vancouver, Canada.

Source: Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center