Customer, client, consumer, recipient, or patient

Since the arrival of managed care, there has been a trend toward changing the basic terminology used to address clinicians and patients. Instead of the term "patient", third party payors frequently use terms such as "customer, client, consumer or recipient". One study demonstrated that patients prefer to be called patients. To investigate the preferred term to refer to patients and to be referred to by patients, we mailed a questionnaire to 100 physicians in four medical specialties each and to 100 psychologists. The overall response rate was 61%. Physicians overwhelmingly preferred to refer to patients by the patient's last name, their second preference was the patient's first name. Psychologists preferred to refer to the patients by first name, their second preference was the patient's last name. No group favored using terms such as client, customer, consumer, or recipient. Most physicians and psychologists preferred being referred to as doctors and nobody favored the term provider.