Commonwealth Fund Survey Finds U.S. Healthcare System Failing High-Need Patients
The U.S. healthcare system is failing patients with complex medical needs, many of whom struggle to access the coordinated medical, behavioral, and social services they need to manage their conditions and avoid costly hospital visits, an issue brief from the Commonwealth Fund finds.
Based on a survey of more than three thousand adults, the brief, How High-Need Patients Experience Health Care in the Unites States (20 pages, PDF), found that while 95 percent of the more than eighteen hundred high-need respondents had a regular doctor or place of care, 44 percent reported that they had experienced delays in care in the past year — compared with 21 percent of non-high-need respondents — due to limited access to care coordinators, counseling, assistance in managing functional limitations, and/or transportation services. Nearly half the high-need population — which tends to be older, less educated, and poorer and includes a greater share of women and African Americans than the general population — reported being hospitalized overnight (48 percent) or going to the emergency room multiple times (47 percent) in the past two years...