Table 3. Physicians’ perception on their patients’ health expenses, their own roles and duties and their reported practices of protecting their patients and their families from health care costs.
*For some of the criteria the total do not sum up to 100% due to rounding.
| Strongly agree (%)* |
Partly agree (%) |
Neutral (%) | Partly disagree (%) |
Strongly disagree (%) |
Number who answered this question | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Physicians´ perceptions regarding patient out-of-pocket expenditures, financial risk and resource scarcity | ||||||
| In my setting, there is lack of enough resources to provide standard medical care | 79 | 17 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 536 |
| I have seen that health care costs drive people into financial crises | 49 | 33 | 10 | 4 | 3 | 530 |
| I find that the patients in the private clinics are often forced to pay for diagnostics/treatment they will not benefit much from | 34 | 35 | 18 | 6 | 7 | 529 |
| I see examples of patients that are not well informed about the total treatment costs in the private clinics | 37 | 38 | 18 | 4 | 4 | 528 |
| I see examples of patients that are not well informed about the total treatment costs in the public health care system | 29 | 46 | 14 | 6 | 3 | 530 |
| Physicians reported attitudes regarding their roles and duties | ||||||
| Physicians have the obligation to protect the health care system from avoidable expenses | 67 | 25 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 533 |
| Physicians should adhere to cost effective standard interventions instead of more expensive interventions that has small proven advantages over the standard intervention | 64 | 25 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 531 |
| Physicians should try to protect poor families from out-of-pocket health expenses, by recommending cheaper, but second best treatment | 34 | 39 | 15 | 7 | 5 | 533 |
| Denying medically beneficial but costly services to patients interferes with the doctor-patient relationship | 29 | 35 | 16 | 9 | 12 | 523 |
| Physicians reported practices | ||||||
| Costs for the patient is important for me when I decide to use or use an intervention or not | 62 | 26 | 7 | 3 | 2 | 530 |
| I try to act as my patients advocate to make sure they get the medical services they need | 53 | 31 | 10 | 4 | 1 | 525 |
| The financial burden on the health care system is important when I decide to use an intervention or not | 37 | 37 | 18 | 6 | 3 | 530 |
| Ongoing and future costs to the patient influence my decisions more than use of hospital resources | 33 | 41 | 17 | 4 | 2 | 524 |
| If I see that the patient is poor, I do not let the patient know about the expensive options | 11 | 26 | 16 | 21 | 26 | 529 |