"The doctor is always right."
"The more care, the better."
"America has the best healthcare system in the world."
These generalizations are all myths, according to Senior Health Policy Editor for Consumer Reports Trudy Lieberman. Lieberman spoke at last night's inaugural panel on Keeping Health Care Quality on the Policy Agenda.
Many internationally renowned professionals within the health care field met at the Inn at Penn to discuss ways of improving health care quality within the United States.
Nursing Professor Norma Lang coordinated the panel in order to address what she believes to be an issue that is often ignored. According to Lang, the health care system does not receive the attention it deserves.
"By raising awareness, hopefully we can bring the topic of health care to the political agenda," Lang said.
Lang said that, unfortunately, too many other issues take precedent and healthcare problems remain overlooked. She said the purpose of this conference was to form strategies to make sure people pay attention to deficiencies within the healthcare system.
Lang also said she wanted the forum to help acknowledge the position nursing holds within the health care field.
"Nursing is invisible when one talks about health," Lang said.
Annenberg School for Communication Dean Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who moderated the panel discussion last night, could not agree more. Before the event, she stated that the "role of nurses has eroded."
Nurses are forced into overtime, Jamieson said afterwards, and their positions are being filled by unskilled workers, adding to the deterioration.
Jamieson also attributed health care problems to a void in public awareness. She said that there is no clear sense among consumers regarding the service that they should be receiving.
Jamieson complained that rather than focusing on remedying the quality of care, public awareness has been focused on the legal battles between insurers and lawyers. She believes that the real solution is within the system itself rather than in the focus on patients' damage awards and other rights following patient injury.
Kenneth Shine, president of the Institute of Medicine, had a slightly different take on the U.S. health care situation from the two Penn professors. He said he believes that the attention given to health care within the political venue "has never been higher," pointing to the conference as a means of maintaining this effort.
His problems with the U.S. health care system lay in treatment that is not very patient-centered.
"There is a major gap within the quality of health care in America between what it could do and what it actually does." Shine said. "There must be a national effort to close this gap."
Shine explained that most patients are not aware of this gap and lack a clear concept of the quality of care that they should be receiving.
"The fact that 40 percent of people with depression are actually diagnosed demonstrates the gap in what the system could do," Shine said.
Director of the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety Gregg Meyer described the discrepancy in service as more of a "chasm" than a gap.
Meyer attributed this gap to the lack of accurate and useful quality reports. The public, he said, lacks information on which health care systems offer better quality care.
"Consumers should be educated in order to realize that all providers do not provide equal quality service," Nursing Professor Linda Aiken added.
President of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations Dennis O'Leary complained that only negative messages receive media attention, while information on quality measures get bypassed.
"Since we are unable to get quality measures to the attention of the press, we cannot get it on the public agenda and policy, as well," O'Leary said.
Health Care Systems Department Chairman Mark Pauly provided a drastically different perspective on the subject. He does not believe in the widely referred to "gap" that exists within health care services.
"With the middle class, the quality is not that bad, and when it is bad, it's there own fault," Pauly said.
He said the real problems lie within the uninsured population.
O'Leary remained slightly optimistic about the possibility of improving U.S. health care services.
"It is not an impossible job, but a long and difficult journey," he said.
Yesterday's event was dedicated to John Eisenberg, the late director of the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality at the Department of Health and Human Services.
