Many Docs Aren’t Ready to Talk With Patients About Health Spending

Posted by Jacob Goldstein in the Wall Street Journal Health Blog Lots of employees are getting pushed into high-deductible health plans that leave them on the hook for more of their health-care spending. But many doctors aren’t ready to step in as financial advisers to help patients hash out the costs of their health care. Most primary care docs are ready to counsel patients on costs typically associated with primary care — office visits, medications, and laboratory tests. But only about half were ready to advise on the costs of the high-ticket items like CT scans, visits to specialists and hospitalizations. And only 48% were ready to discuss medical budgets with patients. The findings come from survey results published this month in the American Journal of Managed Care. The idea behind the high-deductible plans, which are often paired with tax-advantaged health-savings accounts, is to turn patients into savvy health care shoppers, seeking out high quality at low prices. But the docs were pretty skeptical about some of the commonly cited sources consumers might use to compare the quality of care given by different providers. Only 21% of docs thought patients could trust health quality information from government Web sites, and 8% thought patients could trust quality information from insurance Web sites. (Docs don’t trust insurance companies? Go figure.)