Bad News About Good Health Care: Satisfied Patients More Likely To Die

People who like the way their doctors treat them are more likely die than people who don’t. That’s the conclusion of a study conducted at the University of California at Davis, that evaluated data from more than 50,000 people. Futurity.org reports that participants were asked to rate their health care on a scale of 0 to 10, as well as questions about how often their health-care providers listened carefully, were respectful, and spent enough time with them. The bad news? The study found that patients who were most satisfied had greater chances of being admitted to the hospital and had about 9 percent higher total health-care costs and 9 percent higher prescription drug expenditures.  Wait, there’s more: the satisfied customers were more likely to die. For every 100 people who died over an average period of nearly four years in the least satisfied group, about 126 people died in the most satisfied group. Read more about the study in Futurity. Read an abstract of the study in the Archives of Internal Medicine.