Many patients who report that they have been affected by malpractice or medical errors haven't had their lives jeopardized by medical professionals, but instead are upset about service delivery problems.
A new study that discovered these misidentified concerns concluded that providers might want to invest in service changes to alleviate these consumer complaints.
The study, supported by the Commonwealth Fund and entitled, "Patient-Reported Safety and Quality of Care in Outpatient Oncology," is based on surveys conducted at Boston-based Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 2004.
Results may have broader implications for other facilities that are trying to improve consumers' perceptions of quality and avoid backlash for perceived quality concerns.
While roughly 20 percent of patients participating in the Dana-Farber surveys reported exposure to an unsafe medical experience, researchers determined that only 31 percent of those respondents identified an actual medical injury, medical error or close call.
Other patients who reported unsafe medical experiences actually were disturbed by quality-of-care concerns, such as long wait times, poor coordination of care or general dissatisfaction with environment and amenities.
Saul Weingart, MD, director of the Center for Patient Safety at Dana-Farber and lead author of the report, investigated the complaints. His study found that providers "did all of the right things, but (patients) said they didn't feel safe," he said.
"Organizations should look at the clinical procedures and maybe focus on those service quality problems," he said. "If patient satisfaction is poor around communication and wait times, that might be where clinical managers need to focus."
Among the patients in the survey who reported that they were victims of medical mistreatment, none sued for malpractice. Nonetheless, Weingart said patients are likely to sue if they believe they were badly treated in the clinical setting.
"In terms of malpractice risk, we know from previous studies that there is a very tenuous relationship between bringing a claim and experiencing a medical error," he said.
A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 70 percent of health consumers say information about malpractice is one of the biggest factors they weigh in selecting a physician.
James Rohack, MD, director of the Center for Health Policy at Scott and White, a Temple, Texas-based health system, said malpractice information could be a worthwhile factor in selecting a physician, but only if the consumer understands the context in which the information is presented.
"The problem is, if you put data up there that has no good relationship to the quality of the physician and reflects more the environment or specialty that the doctor has, the patient may select a doctor they shouldn't be selecting," Rohack said.