Friday, January 30, 2009

Patients don't know who is their inpatient doctor

One surprising finding here -
Most Hospital Patients Unable to Identify Their Physicians, Survey Finds - NYTimes.com

To summarize: Some 75 percent of the patients were unable to name a single doctor assigned to their care. Of the 25 percent who responded with a name, only 40 percent were correct.

This is not surprising:
*Family members are not there during rounds when we come by the patient room
*Work hour restrictions force numerous resident physician handoffs at academic hospitals, making it difficult to know who is the primary resident
*Reimbursement forces division of labor, thus PCPs don't see their admitted patients and have brought about the rise of hospitalists (arguably, hospitalists provides better care for patients so this is a good thing from a quality standpoint - another topic for another post)

But the one thing that was surprising was that patients able to name one of their physicians also were more likely to be unsatisfied with their care. Now that's one finding that I have no explanation for...

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