Key Reasons that Cause Trust deficit amid Doctors and Patients
November 29, 2021Patients are not content with the medical service providers in many countries, including India. Accordingly, there is a rising trust deficit amid patients and doctors that require to be resolved if the industry is to deliver safe and cost-effective care to the patients.
Healthcare services, like other humble occupations, is a service to the needy masses. However, a report by Hindustan Times shows that 3 of 4 people think government hospitals are unethical in India. On the other hand, private hospitals are blamed for overcharging, though there is no particular rule on this problem or issue.
Because of these issues, incidents involving violence to get improved medical outcomes are rising in hospitals. There are many cases in hospitals regarding how rapidly situations can turn out of control and become a national issue. Such occurrences lead to a trust deficit between patients, doctors, and other medical professionals harming each other’s interests.
Factors Leading to Trust Deficit Between Doctors and Patients
Here are the key factors that further lead and contribute to the trust deficit between patients and doctors. Also, we will discuss how to solve healthcare’s trust deficit:
1) Gaps in transparency between patients and doctors
With the lack of interaction between patients and doctors, there is a high risk of issues like transparency and corruption that have increased with time. This scenario creates mistrust among the common people against all doctors and medical professionals.
Patients require to be treated with respect and esteem. Their rights are a vital part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and differ in diverse nations and jurisdictions, relying upon principal cultural and societal norms.
Doctors and medical professionals cannot take a patient for granted in the current healthcare ecosystem. Transparency concerning time consumed for health treatments, medical procedures, and medicine costs before a patient’s treatment should be shared whenever the patient or his relatives ask.
2) Focus on medical treatment than preventive health care
For a long time now, doctors have focused more on health treatments than preventive health care. In India, because of the several socio-economic inequalities scenarios, need far more consideration across preventive health care.
Doctors in top positions should direct and revive the healthcare community’s interest in pre-emptive maintenance and care.
3) Follow-up should be a part of doctor-patient communication
Once the patient is guided on follow-ups by doctors and medical professionals, they must ensure they are not missing the schedules. Doctors are not given training on communication skills sets and their responsibilities to society.
However, these follow-up notifications can be enabled by healthcare management software or a clinic management solution.
4) Lack of adequate attention given to patients
A report anticipates that doctors in India attend patients involving an average time of merely 2 minutes. The study further suggests that patients are the losers here, paying more at pharmacies, over-utilizing antibiotics, and having a deprived relation with doctors.
Furthermore, doctors in public hospitals consult multiple patients on a single visit due to the rush at OPDs. It is therefore not rare for doctors to mix up treatments and symptoms amid different patients.
5) Absence of informal interaction between patients and doctors
There is even a requirement to build platforms for informal interaction between patients and doctors to discuss their viewpoints so patients can build trust frankly. Social media platforms like LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube can assist.
Here, both digital and traditional media require playing an optimistic role than always showing loopholes. They need to display an informed view to drive positive discussions on healthcare and medical treatment topics. Doctors can play an active part in this scenario to build trust in patients through webinars and enabling digital media publications.
6) Referral commissions to doctors and medical professionals
The medical industry must eliminate the involved referral commission to medical professionals and doctors for sending patients to other medical facilities.
However, cost-effectiveness and affordability are other challenges across the healthcare sector. The government requires giving apt incentives to healthcare stakeholders and businesses, and it requires building the precise medical ecosystem and setting up health care policies for enabling investments.
Key Reasons why the above factors happen at hospitals?
● High work pressure on hospitals
In the current scenario, the high work pressure and stressful working conditions have negative impacts on most doctors’ health in diverse medical specialities, which leads to the above-discussed issues.
● Administrative mismanagement at hospitals
Even mismanagement and poor responsiveness from medical administrative staff at hospitals leads to these discussed factors, which further increase trust deficit amongst Indian patients.
● Lack of innovation by the healthcare community
Even though the Indian government has introduced vital initiatives that will take medicine and health care sector closer to growth and achievements. However, there is still a lack of healthcare innovation and smart handling of operational activities in hospitals considering the current ground realism.
And this is one of the causes of trust deficient factors affecting the whole healthcare community. All this mismanagement, lack of innovation and high work pressure can be resolved by adopting healthcare management software (HMS) and clinic management solution.
Key Takeaways
Today, most consumers feel that medical providers are steered by motives of extreme exploitation and would take their advantage at the leanest opportunity. However, nothing could be beyond the truth, particularly in these exceedingly regulatory times of ever-intensifying costs and continuously shrinking margins for medical stakeholders.
Getting back the reliability would not be simple unless there is a rigorous effort to make a new opening, especially by doctors and hospitals. Since the contributions start at home, the medical providers must begin by cleaning their tables first, and the rest will follow.SoftClinic’s healthcare management software is one of the best medical software that can flawlessly assist you in accomplishing all hospital related goals along with improvements in the doctor and patient relationship. You can connect with their tech-savvy teams for all sorts of healthcare management software and clinic management solution.
Also Read: How to Reduce Waiting Time in Your Practice With A Clinic Software?
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