Trends in outpatient medicine: Patients still want more intensive physician medication information

Data, facts and instruments on the German health system

What it’s all about

The IFABS Business Comparison Tracker© for general practitioner, specialist and dental practice management also records, among other things, the effects that practice owners achieve with their patient discussions on the impact side of practice management. For many physicians, the results determined here often lead to an almost shocking experience, as they have to recognize how inadequately their consultations are sometimes received by patients.

Low responsiveness to patient wishes

The practice visitors included in the research are asked to anonymously express their opinions on

The nature and extent of the information provided by the medical professionals,
their behavior in the conversation and
on the provision of information about prescribed medications.

At the same time, the associated requirements of the respondents are determined in order to calculate the Adherence Impact Scores (AIS), which in the average observation were as follows (100 % = Optimal Adherence Promotion):

Information behavior: 27.3 %
Conversational guidance: 34.7
Medication information: 16.8 %.

Clearly articulated requirements

In the free texts, the patients express their criticism in an even more differentiated manner. Overall, they are often of the opinion that they

were only able to present their concerns inadequately („After the first cue, you’re already interrupted!“),
not examined intensively enough („… please more detailed diagnosis of the cause of pain…“) and
were not involved enough in the doctor’s considerations („A look into the computer, then the prescription and bye!“).

Doctors without insight

Physicians are always completely surprised by these aspects. Most of them have been conducting their conversations in an unchanged form for years and have never themselves had the impression that they were not meeting their patients‘ requirements. If we look at the physicians‘ documentation on the design of their consultations, we see, for example, that the diagnostic examinations are often very intensive, but the physicians conduct them without words or comments, so that the patients cannot understand the respective procedure.