Nearly Half of Americans Worry About Healthcare Safety, Study Finds
Nearly Half of Americans Worry About Healthcare Safety, Study Shows
Five years after a groundbreaking Institute of Medicine report focused attention on medical errors in hospitals, a new survey by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, in Menlo Park, California, in partnership with the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the Harvard School of Public Health, finds that the majority of Americans do not believe the quality of care has improved.
In a telephone survey of 2,012 adults conducted from early July to early September, 40 percent of respondents said that the quality of health care had gotten worse over the past five years, while nearly one in four (38 percent) said it had stayed the same. Only 17 percent said the quality of care had improved. The survey also found that nearly half (48 percent) of respondents said they were concerned about the safety of the medical care they and their families receive, while more than half (55 percent) said they were dissatisfied with the quality of health care in the United States — up from 44 percent in a survey conducted four years ago. In addition, people with chronic health conditions were considerably more likely than other healthcare consumers to express concerns about their quality of care and report having personal experiences with medical errors.
The attitudes toward care revealed by the survey exist despite the efforts by hospitals, doctors, and health plans to reduce medical errors and improve the quality of care in the wake of the 1999 Institute of Medicine report, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, which concluded that hospital-based medical errors were the eighth leading cause of death in the U.S. The primary cause was problems with the health system itself, rather than the performance of individual doctors, nurses, and other providers.
"This survey shows that the challenge is not just to improve patient safety, but to convince the public that real progress is being made," said Kaiser Family Foundation president Drew Altman.
For more information on the survey and its results, see:
http://kff.org/kaiserpolls/pomr111704pkg.cfm.
“Five Years After IOM Report on Medical Errors, Nearly Half of All Consumers Worry About the Safety of Their Health Care.”
Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Press Release
11/17/04.
Primary Subject: Health
Location(s): California, Menlo Park, National
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