RSS FeedSurvey: Physicians Express Little Confidence in Health Reform Law Improving Health Care
15 June 2010Since we last surveyed physicians about health care reform back in December, the bill became a law (The PPACA – Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and the accompanying reconciliation act). Many of the law’s contents have been analyzed, debated, and explained in the media. We thought it might be timely to ask physicians about their thoughts on health reform and explore their perspectives a bit further, now that the law has been passed and some of the contents explained in more detail. To that end, we asked physicians to rank the new law in a variety of categories based on several of the objectives of the health reform bill, which we felt would allow them to express their confidence in health care reform as favorable or unfavorable as it may be.
We wanted to learn more about the level of confidence physicians have in health reform’s abilities to improve healthcare and deliver on the promises made about what the health reform laws will accomplish.
We are not trying to make a political statement with these results, and as a firm we have no official stance on the issue from a political perspective. We do talk to physicians every day for a living, and, in doing so, we feel that because physicians are on the front-lines of medicine, they know the healthcare system better than anyone else, better than politicians on either side of the aisle.
Additionally, an ample supply of quality, well-trained physicians is crucial to a successful healthcare delivery system. Therefore, we feel that physicians’ insights and perspectives on the health reform law should be of interest, especially to others in the healthcare industry such as our clients and candidates.
So we asked physicians to rank the new health reform law in a number of categories, using a scale of 1 to 5, as follows:
- = Very Negative/Very Unfavorable Impact
- = Somewhat Negative/Very Unfavorable Impact
- = Neutral / No Impact
- = Somewhat Positive / Somewhat Favorable Impact
- = Very Positive / Very Favorable Impact
This was an unscientific survey conducted in late April, via an online survey program/tool which tabulates and sorts all the responses. 2,652 physicians completed this part of the survey, which was part of our annual Physician Compensation & Relocation Survey. Respondents represented 19 specialties and almost all 50 states.
Physicians expressed little confidence in the new law’s effectiveness at favorably impacting many aspects of the health care system. Below is the average ranking for each category. Keep in mind, a rating of “3″ is neutral – anything below 3 is negative/unfavorable, anything above 3 is positive/favorable.
- Provides coverage for more Americans = 3.68
- Prevents fraud, waste, and abuse = 2.69
- Provides incentives for quality care = 2.61
- Impact on physician-patient relationship = 2.35
- Impact on reimbursements to hospitals & physicians = 2.00
- Preventing frivolous lawsuits = 2.30
- Impact on physician supply = 2.10
- Impact on patients’ access to care = 2.75
- Financial impact on individual taxpayers= 1.92
- Financial impact on businesses = 2.09
The only category out of ten that physicians ranked positively (above a 3) was the law’s ability to “provide healthcare coverage for more Americans”.
Despite that, the “impact on patients’ access to care” was given a slightly negative overall ranking of 2.75. 44.7% of physicians surveyed feel that health reform will actually have a negative impact on patients’ access to care. This seems to indicate that, while more Americans will have coverage, physicians feel that the access to care will not be improved, perhaps due to the physician supply. The majority of physicians surveyed feel that health reform will have a very negative (37.8%) or somewhat negative (28.3%) impact on physician supply.
72.1% of physicians responded feel that health reform will have a very negative or somewhat negative impact on reimbursements to hospitals and physicians. Physicians did not indicate that the law would have a positive impact on incentives for improving quality of care. The health reform laws have been highly touted as helping to eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse within the healthcare system, but many physicians (40%) felt that health reform laws will have a negative impact on that as well, and another 36% indicated they feel that health reform will have no impact on fraud, waste, and abuse within the system.
One other question that would have been interesting would have been to ask how doctors predict that the health reform laws will impact the overall cost of healthcare delivery in the U.S. We unfortunately didn’t ask that question. But based on the responses to related questions regarding preventing frivolous lawsuits, and fraud, waste, and abuse of the system, all of which drive up healthcare costs, one could deduce that physicians would also not feel confident that the current health reform law will decrease health care delivery costs.
Since the the health reform law is in place and implementation in motion, hopefully physicians’ lack of confidence is misguided, and the laws will prove to be more effective than physicians are anticipating.
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