Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Disparities in Emergency Department and Urgent Care Opioid Prescribing Before and After Randomized Clinician Feedback Interventions.
Racial and ethnic minorities receive opioid prescriptions at lower rates and dosages than White patients. Though opioid stewardship interventions can improve or exacerbate these disparities, there is little evidence about these effects. We conducted a secondary analysis of a cluster-randomized controlled trial conducted among 438 clinicians from 21 emergency departments and 27 urgent care clinics. Our objective was to determine whether randomly allocated opioid stewardship clinician feedback interventions that were designed to reduce opioid prescriptions had unintended effects on disparities in prescribing by patient race and ethnicity. ⋯ Combined individual audit and peer comparison feedback was associated with fewer opioid pills per prescription equally by patient race and ethnicity. However, the intervention did not significantly close the baseline disparity in prescribing by race.
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This study assessed the ability of end-tidal carbon dioxide (ETCO2 ) in predicting in-hospital mortality and intensive care unit (ICU) admission compared to standard vital signs at ED triage as well as comparing to measures of metabolic acidosis. ⋯ ETCO2 was a better predictor of in-hospital mortality and ICU admission than the standard vital signs at ED triage. ETCO2 correlated significantly with measures of metabolic acidosis.