Can patients assess the quality of health care?

Patients are the recipients of what is euphemistically called "health
care".

Doctors used to write prescriptions in Latin for the simple reason of
creating an intellectual gap . The patient was expected to blindly trust
the doctor.

Today, where there is no longer much left of an atmosphere of trust
in most human to human transactions, it is a wise patient who becomes
informed and who questions the doctor's every move.

These patients are usually labelled obnoxious, they often come in
with a list of questions and sometimes with clippings from newspapers. Not
many physicians enjoy their company.

Patient satisfaction, whatever that might entail, dictates who will
get the business in the community. Bedside manner is important. The fact
that bedside manner, looks, reputation and a nicely furnished surgery
(with refreshments in the reception area?) have little to do with the
quality of the "care" the patient receives is of little importance.

Who should judge the quality of health care? Surely not the
colleagues or Pharma reps.
It's a bit like poetry. Most critics will tell you that there are certain
rules and expectations in modern poetry, that rhyme is well and truly dead
and that Rod McKuen was an absolute failure. However, the people who read
poetry, the masses for whom the poems are written, are the judges.
They prefer rhyme and they like McKuen.
And so it should be.

We have all seen and continue to observe what happens when "experts"
decide what is good for the common man.

Competing interests:
None declared