Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Race, Ethnicity, And Insurance: The Association With Opioid Use In A Pediatric Hospital Setting, Louis Ehwerhemuepha, Candice D. Donaldson, Zeev N. Kain, Vivian Luong, Michelle A. Fortier, William Feaster, Michael Weiss, Daniel Tomaszewski, Sun Yang, Michael Phan, Brooke N. Jenkins

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Background

This study examined the association between race/ethnicity and health insurance payer type with pediatric opioid and non-opioid ordering in an inpatient hospital setting.

Methods

Cross-sectional inpatient encounter data from June 2013 to June 2018 was retrieved from a pediatric children’s hospital in Southern California (N = 55,944), and statistical analyses were performed to determine associations with opioid ordering.

Results

There was a significant main effect of race/ethnicity on opioid and non-opioid orders. Physicians ordered significantly fewer opioid medications, but a greater number of non-opioid medications, for non-Hispanic African American children than non-Hispanic Asian, Hispanic/Latinx, and non-Hispanic White pediatric …

Parent Responses To Pediatric Pain: The Differential Effects Of Ethnicity On Opioid Consumption, Candice D. Donaldson, Brooke N. Jenkins, Michelle A. Fortier, Michael T. Phan, Daniel M. Tomaszewski, Sun Yang, Zeev N. Kain

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Objective

Within the context of the United States opioid epidemic, some parents often fear the use of opioids to help manage their children's postoperative pain. As a possible consequence, parents often do not dispense optimal analgesic medications to their children after surgery, putting their children at risk of suffering from postsurgical pain. The objective of this research was to assess ethnicity as a predictor of both pain and opioid consumption, and to examine how Hispanic/Latinx and Non-Hispanic White parents alter their child's opioid consumption in response to significant postsurgical pain.

Methods

Participants were 254 children undergoing outpatient tonsillectomy and/or adenoidectomy …

A Multicenter Mixed-Effects Model For Inference And Prediction Of 72-H Return Visits To The Emergency Department For Adult Patients With Trauma-Related Diagnoses, Ehsan Yaghmaei, Louis Ehwerhemuepha, William Feaster, David Gibbs, Cyril Rakovski

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Objective

Emergency department (ED) return visits within 72 h may be a sign of poor quality of care and entail unnecessary use of healthcare resources. In this study, we compare the performance of two leading statistical and machine learning classification algorithms, and we use the best performing approach to identify novel risk factors of ED return visits.

Methods

We analyzed 3.2 million ED encounters with at least one diagnosis under “injury, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes” and “external causes of morbidity.” These encounters included patients 18 years or older from across 128 emergency room facilities in the …

Medication Safety During Transitions Of Care:The Importance Of Checklists In Preventing Patient Harm, Laressa Bethishou, Olivia Lounsbury, Donna Prosser

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

There is a need to optimize patient safety as patients navigate through the healthcare system. With each transition of care, patients are vulnerable to changes that may cause adverse effects, including changes in their healthcare team, health status, and medications. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) defines a transition of care as “the movement of a patient from one setting of care to another.” While the concept itself may seem simple, this definition fails to capture the many potential handoff complications which classify these transitions as high risk for patients. With 67% of patients facing unintended medication discrepancies …

Nicaragua's Response To Covid-19 – Authors' Reply, Mateo Jarquin, Andrea M. Prado, Benjamin Gallo Marin

History Faculty Articles and Research

An author's to John Perry's commentary ("Nicaragua's Response to COVID-19"), which was itself written in response to Mather, Gallo Marin, Medina Perez, et al.'s "Love in the Time of COVID-19: Negligence in the Nicaraguan Response".

Original article: Salazar Mather TP, Gallo Marin B, Medina Perez G, et al. Love in the time of COVID-19: negligence in the Nicaraguan response. The Lancet Global Health. 2020;8(6):e773. doi:10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30131-5 Perry's commentary: Perry J. Nicaragua’s response to COVID-19. The Lancet Global Health. Published online April 2020. doi:10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30218-7