Background: Prior studies have found racial disparities in how patients are assessed for pain and prescribed opioids from emergency department and surgical settings. However, we do not know whether similar disparities exist among general medicine inpatients. We examined opioid prescriptions at discharge among adults admitted to the general medicine service at our medical center, with […]

Background: Patient satisfaction has attracted increasing attention as a surrogate indicator for quality of care and as a component of the new physician compensation structure. Interpersonal patient–physician relationships, a component of patient satisfaction, may be adversely affected by communication barriers and is of particular concern for the rising United States population of Hispanic/Latino (H/L) patients […]

Background: Health care equity, one of the six domains of high-quality health care as defined by the Institute of Medicine, will only be achieved when health care outcomes do not vary based on patient social characteristics, such as gender, race, ethnicity, geographic location, and socioeconomic status. Readmission is a significant outcome for patients and health […]