Journal of pain and symptom management
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The literature predominately describes hospice utilization among Medicare recipients, with a limited number of reports describing use among all age groups. ⋯ In addition to revealing racial, geographic, and other disparities in hospice care across Alabama, our results indicate usage rates in Alabama trail behind those observed nationally. We also identified previously unreported interactions between race, urbanization level, and poverty classification. Future studies should explore whether such relationships exist elsewhere and the rationale for their occurrence.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Feb 2011
Pain documentation and predictors of analgesic prescribing for elderly patients during emergency department visits.
Inappropriate pain documentation is likely to be an important contributor to the poor management of pain in elderly patients in the emergency department (ED). Failure to assess pain limits ability to treat pain. ⋯ ED pain score documentation is suboptimal in the elderly population. Disparity in the use of analgesic prescriptions and opioid analgesics exists and may result in patients not receiving analgesics. Improving pain assessment and documentation, changes in attitude toward analgesic prescribing, and recognition of ethnic, racial, and age differences in patients with pain have the potential to contribute to effective management of pain in the ED.