Since patients pay about 20 percent of health care costs in the United States, this is an important omission. Out-of-pocket costs are a persistent concern to the public, creating enough of a burden that many patients forgo prescribed medications.
"This means that patients are changing the plan of care for financial reasons without consulting their doctors," said study author Caleb Alexander, M.D., instructor of medicine, associate faculty in the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics and a member of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars program at the University of Chicago.
"Although national changes in health care financing are needed," he said, "there are also things that individual physicians can do right now to help patients burdened by their out-of-pocket costs, such as using generic or less expensive medicines whenever possible. But that process has to begin with a conversation."
A survey of 133 physicians found that nine out of ten doctors felt they should consider a patient's out-of-pocket costs, four out of five believed that patients wanted to discuss costs, yet only one out of three reported actually discussing costs with the study patients.
"The difference between what physicians reported they should do and what they actually do is striking," said Alexander. "Of course, physicians are under enormous time pressures and there may be many legitimate reasons why this discrepancy exists."
The 484 patients interviewed as they left the doctor's office told a similar tale. Sixty-three percent said they would prefer to talk
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Contact: John Easton
jeaston@uchospitals.edu
773-702-6241
University of Chicago Medical Center
19-Aug-2003