Navigate the healthcare industry
Healthcare Brew covers pharmaceutical developments, health startups, the latest tech, and how it impacts hospitals and providers to keep administrators and providers informed.
A majority of doctors and nurses said health insurance practices affect their ability to treat patients, and contribute to delayed or reduced quality of care, according to survey data released Tuesday.
The findings—which come from three different polls Morning Consult conducted on behalf of the American Hospital Association (AHA)—highlight how insurance practices and policies are affecting not just medical access, but also the clinicians who provide such care.
“These surveys bear out what we’ve heard for years—certain insurance companies’ policies and practices are reducing health care access and making it more difficult for our already overwhelmed clinicians to provide care,” AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack said in a statement. “If policymakers are serious about expanding access and addressing the health care workforce crisis, then we must hold insurance companies accountable for these harmful practices.”
The findings:
- More than 80% of physicians surveyed said insurance policies affect how they practice medicine, while 84% said the increase in insurance administrative requirements makes it harder to run a solo practice.
- Eight-four percent of nurses surveyed said insurance administrative policies delay care, 74% said they reduce the quality of care, and 63% said they can interfere with a patient being treated in the right setting.
- More than half of nurses (56%) said their job satisfaction has declined because of insurance administrative requirements.
- Meanwhile, a majority of patients (62%) said they’ve delayed care for insurance-related reasons in the last two years, and 43% of those patients reported worsening health as a result.
- More than half of patients (54%) said they’ve struggled to afford insurance costs and premiums, and 83% want their provider—not insurer—to make care decisions.
Methodology: Morning Consult surveyed 1,502 adult patients, 500 nurses, and 500 physicians via the internet from December 2022 to April 2023. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus three or four percentage points.