Mack DS, et al. - Researchers performed a cross-sectional study to evaluate racial disparities in pain management among residents with cancer in nursing homes at time of admission. Black nursing home residents reported less pain compared with White nursing home residents and subsequently White residents received more frequent pain management at admission.

Methods

• Researchers performed a comparison of reported pain and pain management between non-Hispanic White and non-Hispanic Black newly admitted nursing home residents with cancer (n=342,920) using the de-identified Minimum Data Set version 3.0.
• They used pain management strategies including the use of scheduled analgesics, pro re nata analgesics, and non-pharmacological methods.
• In this study, presence of pain was based on self-report when residents were able, and staff report when unable.
• They used robust Poisson models to determine the estimates of adjusted prevalence ratios (aPR) and 95% CIs for reported pain and pain management strategies.

Results

• About 60% of the nursing home residents with cancer reported pain; non-Hispanic Blacks were reported less frequently to have both self-reported pain (aPR [Black vs White]: 0.98, 95% CI: 0.97–0.99) and staff-reported pain (aPR: 0.89, 95% CI: 0.86–0.93) documentation compared with Non-Hispanic Whites.
• Most residents received some pharmacologic pain management, however, Blacks less frequently received any compared with Whites (Blacks: 66.6%, Whites: 71.1%; aPR: 0.98, 95% CI: 0.97–0.99), consistent with differences in receipt of non-pharmacologic treatments (Blacks: 25.8%, Whites: 34.0%; aPR: 0.98, 95 CI%: 0.96–0.99).