Health insurance is expensive. This is true whether you get your health insurance from your employer, from a private insurer, or from one of the government’s public insurance programs. One of the things that increases the cost of health insurance is when patients are given too much health care. There are reasons why doctors feel compelled to do too much for patients.
There are a number of factors that make health insurance expensive. Doctors in America are paid a much higher salary then their counterparts in other countries are receiving.
Insurance companies can influence the cost of certain types of health care and treatments. Until recently, private insurers were not required to spend very much of the money they received from their customers on things that actually helped improve the health of those customers. Many spent it on the salaries of employees and CEO’s instead.
Another important factor is the amount of care that a patient receives. Extra tests, treatment, and time spent being seen by a doctor all add up to extra expenses. A survey shows that 42% of American doctors feel that their patients are receiving too much medical care. This isn’t about the quality of the care that the patients are getting. Instead, it is about the amount of it.
Despite this belief, many doctors are still providing too much care for their patients. The reasons why are interesting. A total of 76% of the doctors surveyed said that they are giving their patients more care than is necessary because the doctors are concerned about being sued for malpractice. In short, there is the potential that a patient could sue them because the doctor missed something. Perhaps that something could have been caught if only the doctor made the patient take a certain test.
52% of doctors said that they are giving too much care because of clinical performance measures. This means that the doctors are concerned that if they do not “check off all the boxes” with each and every patient that it will result in a bad performance review for the doctor. No matter what your job is, no one wants to get a bad review from their boss.
Out of the physicians who took the survey, 40% felt that they were giving patients too much care because of the limited amount of time that they were able to spend with patients. It takes less time to write a prescription for medication than to sit down with the patient and explain why he or she doesn’t really need that prescription.
62% of doctors said that they believe that financial incentives encourage physicians to provide too much care for their patients. I’m not entirely sure what this means, specifically, but I have a guess. Sometimes, doctors are offered extra money if they refer patients to a particular non-smoking program, or if they prescribe a certain (non-generic) medication. Certain tests generate income for specialists, who need doctors to refer people to them. Perhaps that plays a part as well.
Image by Wonderlane on Flickr