Related Experiment Videos
[Costs and fees in health care. Evaluation and assessment by cardiological patients]
1Abteilung für Kardiologie und Angiologie, Bergmannsheil, Universitätsklinik, Bochum.
Insights
Patients find healthcare costs high but justifiable. Key cost drivers include expensive and numerous drugs, and an aging population. Greater transparency in healthcare pricing is essential.
Area of Science:
- Cardiology
- Health Economics
- Patient Perception
Context:
- Pilot study involving 70 cardiology patients.
- Assessed patient understanding of costs for procedures like coronary angiography, PTCA, heart transplantation, pacemakers, and prosthetic heart valves.
- Included estimation of healthcare professional salaries and identification of cost increase factors.
Purpose:
- To evaluate patient awareness and perception of healthcare costs.
- To identify patient-cited reasons for rising healthcare expenditures.
- To compare patient estimates with actual costs of cardiac procedures and devices.
Summary:
- 91.7% of patients perceived healthcare as expensive yet reasonable given the outcomes.
- Primary reasons cited for cost increases: expensive drugs (70.6%), high drug volume (56.9%), and an increasing elderly patient population (56.9%).
- Patients frequently misjudged costs, overestimating coronary angiography and underestimating PTCA, pacemakers, and prosthetic heart valves.
Impact:
- Highlights significant patient misinformation regarding the true costs of cardiac procedures and devices.
- Underscores the need for improved patient education and financial transparency in healthcare.
- Provides insights into patient-driven perceptions of healthcare economic drivers.
Patients And Method:
In a pilot study 70 patients treated in the Department of Cardiology were asked to asses the cost of coronary angiography, PTCA, heart transplantation, pacemakers and prosthetic heart valves. Salaries of physicians and nurses should be estimated, and causes of increase of costs in health care be defined.
Results:
91.7% patients criticized health care as too expensive but reasonable with regard to output and efficacy. As most important reasons for increase of cost were given "expensive drugs" (70.6%), "great number of drugs" (56.9%) and "increased number of old patients" (56.9%). Costs of coronary angiography were overestimated (twice) and those of PTCA were underestimated (half). Two thirds of the patients guessed the price of pacemakers and prosthetic heart valves much to low. Salaries of physicians had been estimated near the upper reference value, those of nurses near the lower reference value.
Conclusion:
Most of our patients were insufficiently informed about costs in health care. Clarification and more transparency are needed.