The Council of Accountable Physician Practices (CAPP) conducted focus groups across the country to compare the perceptions of patients and physicians. CAPP, which is made up of many of the leading medical groups in the country, followed the focus groups with a survey of 30,000 patients and 700 physicians.

Based on some discouraging results on physician access to their patients electronic medical records and the communication of the importance of avoiding and managing chronic illness through better diet, exercise and prevention CAPP conducted additional focus groups in 2018.

One of the most encouraging outcomes of the follow up research was that patients and physicians agreed that the patient-physician relationship, using evidence-based medicine, and care coordination were the highest ranked priorities. It’s also worth noting that both patients and physicians chose technology as the lowest priority.

Regardless of the areas of agreement, the fact the patients and physicians agreed on what they value as the highest priorities, and that patients have increased their understanding of the healthcare delivery system and evidence–based decision making are leaps forward in our quest to strengthen the patient-physician relationship, and improve healthcare costs and outcomes.

The first thing to after you receive a medical bill that is unexpected or seems high is contact the sender and request an itemized bill, with billing codes. All of your options for handling unexpected bills are detailed in Lower Your Healthcare Bills and Medical Bill Financial Help.

Once you have an itemized bill, there are multiple paths to lowering and eliminating the bill. Pathways include;

1. Finding mistakes.
2. Disputing the charges.
3. Applying for charitable care.
4. Appealing for insurance coverage.
5. Negotiating payment discounts and plans.
6. Public Funding

There are also free medical bill review and advocacy services available.

Medical bill review company CoPatient put together a step-by-step medical bill payment guide that’s very easy to use.

You can also get free help from aPatientsPlace.com experts.

We have learned that many cancers are treatable and even curable when detected early. Unfortunatly, we do not yet have simple and proven tests to detect cancer in its earliest stages. This may well change in the next 5 to 10 years. To learn more read about one group’s success detecting melanoma skin cancer with a simple blood test.

If you have any questions about a prescription drug you’re taking, you can learn a great deal from from other patients taking the same drug from the award winning AskaPatient website.  In addition to reviewing ratings you can read about the reason each patient took the drug, their age and sex, the dosage they took, the side effects they experienced, and their comments.

If you want to connect directly to patient groups to discuss your illness, or just read what other people like you are talking about APatientsPlace.com maintains a list of hundreds of groups organized by illness and condition.