“Doctors are rude. Doctors have no time. Doctors don’t explain things that in terms patients can understand. Sound familiar?”
There was a great article in the Wall Street Journal from April 2013 about how improving communication between doctors and their patients can lead to better care and lower costs. “While long thought of as a ‘soft’ science, communication is increasingly understood to be at the root of many of health care’s failures—and a leading culprit in rising costs.”
And how true that statement is! Recent studies have also found that 50 percent of patients walk out of their doctor’s office not understanding what their doctor told them to do and as a result, it’s costing the U.S. Health System an estimated $238 billion per year.
So again, what does that mean for us in the health care arena? We need to start bridging the gap in communication with patients. In this blog, we have definitely discussed the topic before but it’s become such an important one that we feel it’s crucial to continue writing about it! So with that said, we invite you to click here to read more from this WSJ article.
What are your thoughts on these findings? Let us know what you think and what your practice might be doing to bridge the communication gap with patients.