Healthcare Industry Perceptions

The percentage of Americans with a positive impression of the healthcare industry climbed to its highest level in 9 years, reaching 42% in 2012, up from 27% in 2011, according to a Gallup survey of 500 respondents.

According to a Researchscape qualitative study of 53 consumers, the primary drivers of this improved impression are the work of healthcare professionals, continuing medical advances and the Affordable Care Act. Asked to describe the healthcare industry in one word, the most frequently chosen words were expensive and greedy.

Without a doubt, the key strength of the industry is the hard work and empathy of healthcare professionals. Continued medical advances also contribute to a positive impression. Despite the partisan nature of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, it was named by 5 respondents as a positive for the industry and no one singled it out as a negative.

  • Healthcare professionals (mentioned by 17 respondents):
    • “The massive collective effort of good nurses and doctors everywhere.”
    • “The dedication of the many who give their best to the sick/wounded each day. The selflessness of the doctors who spend their own time volunteering to help those in need.”
    • “The long hours and constant availability. The healing of those who are hurt. The collaboration amongst people who have spent many years to learn very specialized things.”
  • Medical advances (mentioned by 7 respondents):
    • “I appreciate the advances that have been made in the healthcare industry over the years. I appreciate that some diseases are practically eradicated, and research continues on others that, hopefully, they will find cures for soon. I appreciate that if I or anyone else needs help, it is out there.”
    • “Procedures and treatments that were experimental a decade ago are now commonplace even in medium sized hospitals. The cutting edge, the medicine based on stem cells and the genome project is staggering impressive.”
    • “Creating medicine and new technology to help patients and help fix diseases.”
  • Affordable Care Act (mentioned by 5 respondents):
    • “The Affordable Care Act passed in 2010 should provide greater regulation and a greater impression of the healthcare industry for me.”
    • “Obama’s new healthcare program.”
    • “Things are changing that will hopefully make healthcare more available to more Americans.”
  • Saves lives (mentioned by 4 respondents):
    • “When an actual life is saved by it.”
    • “It’s helped save people’s lives.”

The sheer expense of the industry is the leading complaint, mentioned by 22 respondents. The next most common complaint involves problems with healthcare insurance. The for-profit nature of the industry is also a complaint.

  • Expensive (mentioned by 22 respondents):
    • “If you cannot afford health insurance and, most likely, you don’t have a job that provides such benefits, you’re in trouble. There’s a large gap between haves and have-nots as far as healthcare affordability.”
    • “The large bills that arrive for simple and quick procedures.”
    • “Prices for care are very expensive and beyond the reach of anyone without health insurance.”
    • “Huge hospital bills bankrupting families. Also, families that cannot get the treatment they need sue to extreme cost.”
    • “The cold business-like aspects of it and the crazy prices of everything.”
    • “How complicated the system is and how expensive it is. It’s sometimes hard to understand how the billing process for health care works, what is covered and what isn’t, and the trade offs between certain kinds of treatments.”
  • Health insurance (mentioned by 13 respondents):
    • “Pretty much anything to do with insurance companies and for-profit hospitals.”
    • “The money-leeching insurance companies.”
    • “The bullshit you have to go through with insurance, even though you pay premiums – so often they screw up and won’t pay for something and you have to spend two hours on the phone trying to fix something that shouldn’t even be your problem.”
  • Profit driven (mentioned by 8 respondents):
    • “The profit-over-people attitude by health insurance companies.”
    • “Profit driven decisions about patient treatment.”
    • “The for-profit hospitals, companies that make billions off of drugs and medical equipment, exclusive contracts, and things of monetary nature that should not be involved in a human rights industry.”
    • “The industry is profit driven and there is something fundamentally wrong with getting rich off of sick people.”

 

Customer Satisfaction with Industry

Each year consumers are as satisfied or more satisfied with hospitals than health insurance, and in 2012 there was a 4-point difference: consumers rated hospitals 76 out of 100 and healthcare insurance 72 out of 100, according to ACSI LLC. Satmetrix estimates the 2012 Net Promoter Score® of health insurance (the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors) to be 4%, with firms ranging from -14% to 43%.

 

Most Admired Companies

We asked participants in our qualitative study to name the healthcare firm they admired most, and the firm they admired the second most. The clear leader was Blue Cross Blue Shield and Aetna was a distant second. No healthcare firm made the Top 30 list of most admired firms across all industries.

According to ACSI LLC, only Blue Cross Blue Shield scores above the industry average for customer satisfaction: BCBS as a brand scores 73 out of 100 and Aetna scores 67 out of 100, compared to an industry average of 72 (an average that includes ratings for firms with insufficient sample size to break out separately).