For example, Black women less likely to have depression screening, more likely to have urine drug test than White women<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n
By Lori Solomon HealthDay Reporter<\/b><\/p>\n
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THURSDAY, March 23, 2023 (HealthDay News) — Racial disparities in discretionary prenatal care are common, according to a study published online March 22 in Birth<\/em>.<\/p>\n Mary A. Byrn, Ph.D., R.N., from Loyola University Chicago, and colleagues used electronic medical record data to identify 7,056 patients receiving perinatal care within a large hospital system between January 2012 and September 2018. Differences in perinatal care were examined by race.<\/p>\n The researchers found that for nondiscretionary care (e.g., guideline-based or based on expert recommendations), there were few differences by race. However, for discretionary care, racial differences were observed. For example, compared with non-Hispanic White women, non-Hispanic Black women were less likely to receive a prenatal depression screen (odds ratio, 0.8) and were more likely to have a urine drug test when denying drug use (odds ratio, 1.6). Hispanic (odds ratio, 0.6) and Asian (odds ratio, 0.4) women were less likely to have a urine drug test completed when denying drug use.<\/p>\n “Perinatal care differs by maternal race\/ethnicity, particularly when guidelines or expert recommendations are absent,” the authors write. “Greater efforts need to be made to identify and mitigate providers’ implicit and explicit biases; expanded professional guidelines may offer some protections against inequitable, discretionary care.”<\/p>\n