Race, economic status, and disparities in the receipt of benzodiazepine prescriptions in a large primary care sample.

Objective: To evaluate the relationship between race, economic status, and patient characteristics with benzodiazepine prescribing in an urban and suburban primary care context.
Method: This retrospective study used data from a previously described cohort of patients seen in a large Ohio healthcare system's primary care clinics from 2019 to 2020. Associations and interactions between race, economic status (using median income of patient ZIP code as a proxy), patient characteristics, and prescription of benzodiazepines were assessed using multivariable logistic regression.
Results: 455,537 patients had 1,643,473 primary care visits, and 5.8% of patients were prescribed a benzodiazepine. White patients were prescribed benzodiazepines more often than Multiracial/Multicultural, African American and Asian American patients (6.5%, 3.8%, 2.7% and 2.0% respectively). Patients from lower income ZIP codes were less likely to receive a prescription. Interaction effects were observed between race, patient economic status, gender, insurance status, and diagnoses (general anxiety disorder, insomnia, and panic disorder). The largest prescribing disparities by race were among patients with these three diagnoses. The largest disparity in prescription by income was seen in African American patients.
Conclusion: African American, Multicultural/Multiracial and Asian American patients were less likely than White patients to receive benzodiazepine prescriptions. Middle and lower-income patients are particularly susceptible to this prescribing disparity.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest Dr. Barnett holds stock options in CB Therapeutics. He serves on advisory boards for Compass Pathways and CB Therapeutics. He receives monetary compensation for editorial work for DynaMed Plus (EBSCO Industries, Inc). He has served as a consultant for Cerebral within the past year, though this relationship is no longer active. The other authors report no potential conflicts of interest.
(Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)