Patient Relations

Wendy S. Harpham, M.D., FACP, draws on decades as a patient with lymphoma to show physicians which phrases comfort patients and which cause distress without meaning to.

How primary care can bring cancer-screening logic to cognitive health on World Alzheimer’s Day (and every day).

Private insurance helps patients get care, but does not cover all costs, according to study by The Commonwealth Fund

U.S. health care has a patient loyalty problem hiding in plain sight, says a new report based on a survey of 10,000 consumers.

The United States must address vaccine misinformation head-on or risk losing children to infectious disease.

The top news stories in medicine this week.

Kansas court records reviewed by The New York Times show the practice charged 18% annual interest, garnished bank accounts and pursued arrest warrants over balances as small as $101.

Since April, confidence in Anthony Fauci has fallen to just 50%, while Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is unchanged at 38%, in a survey fielded during the Senate contempt vote.

Defamation law protects a patient's harsh opinion but not a false assertion of fact, and HIPAA blocks a practice from answering either one with the facts.

Physicians reveal which channels give the most medical misinformation to patients

Anthony Orsini, D.O., says most physicians were never trained for the conversation that follows a medical error, and that how they handle it often decides whether the case ends in court.

Researchers verified thousands of fake reviews posted by providers and clinic staff and found them longer, more clinically detailed and better received than the real thing. HIPAA leaves physicians very little room to respond.

An Annenberg Public Policy Center survey of 1,904 adults found 87% are confident in their own doctor, nurse or other primary care physician, compared with 59% to 61% for the three federal health agencies.

Physicians Foundation findings point to problem getting worse as doctors’ time constraints increase.

When you break bad news to patients, do you do it in a way that makes things worse?

Medical Economics spoke with Michael Pelagalli, J.D., partner at internet defamation firm Minc Law, about where the legal line sits and what a practice should do first.

Panelists said front-desk assumptions about who can afford care are wrong in both directions, and that patients under financial strain rarely say so.

A journey-mapping exercise showed one practice's physicians how small their share of the patient encounter actually was.

Four practice leaders on why patients defer care they could afford, and why explaining the cost has become the practice's job rather than the insurer's.

Despite major problems across U.S. health care, evidence shows what primary care is getting right.

An analysis of 3.6 million patient portal messages found that greetings, length and punctuation helped determine who got a reply from their own physician.

Patient preferences shape clinical decisions, but so do corporate policies, according to PAI survey of employed physicians.

Here’s how AI hallucinations are creating a patient safety problem no one is talking about.

AMA says new guidance from CMS closed gaps documented in health plans' public prior authorization disclosures, but the work isn't finished.

A JAMA Network Open study of nearly 175 million U.S. adults found 68.6% view immediately released results first — many don't understand what they read.