Useful Information
The Cost Consequences of Unsuccessful Patient Communication
When health professionals fail to communicate successfully with patients, it costs. It costs in unnecessary pain, in avoidable deaths, in poor health outcomes, in the prolongation of illnesses, and in many other ways that harm the patient and befuddle the people trying to care for them. It also costs in terms of the financial part of the equation, in large sums of money that get spent unnecessarily because of the communication breakdowns and barriers that occur with surprising frequency in health care settings.
The bibliographic references described in this article provide some of the hard evidence of how costly communication breakdowns in healthcare settings can be, in terms of real money unnecessarily spent. Taken together, they begin to build a picture of a much larger financial problem than most health care institutions are aware of, or perhaps care to acknowledge.There are many ways in which these unnecessary expenses can be reduced or avoided, but serious action to reduce these costs are unlikely to happen unless and until key decision-makers understand and acknowledge the scope and extent of the financial costs of inaction.
