Discussing Costs in the Doctor-Patient Encounter

BACKGROUND:

The cost of illness and medical care has profound implications for society as a whole and for individual patients as they experience being sick and seeking treatment. It is both appropriate and imperative that these costs be discussed in the doctor-patient encounter. Surveys with patients and doctors show that both parties have the desire to discuss costs, yet they rarely have these conversations because of worries about the appropriateness and potential awkwardness of discussing financial matters in the clinical encounter.

In the existing literature we find that patients express a preference for more care, newer care, and expensive care (as they believe cost indicates better care), and they react negatively to conversations they perceive as encouraging rationing. Yet rationing - the use of allocation criteria to distribute resources - is inevitable when resources are limited, and acceptable when done fairly. Recognizing the need for bedside rationing and endeavoring to promote bedside rationing are not antithetical to patient-centered care, however. Open and honest conversations about rationing, when carried out appropriately, can be consistent with patient-centered care and the view of patients as moral agents.

Patients resistance to discussions of rationing, coupled with the financial burden of illness and the reality of rising health care costs, all point to the pressing need to explore strategies for how physicians can address costs in ways that are understanding, empathic, and palatable to patients. In the literature we find scant empirical evidence about how patients would react to doctors talking about (and considering) costs. This study seeks the patient perspective on how these honest conversations about costs can be carried out in a sensitive and appropriate manner.

OBJECTIVE: