Blog Category: Letters from the Foundation

This challenge is a key component of the Foundation’s new focus on issues of trust in health care. We chose to emphasize trust because this crucial aspect of an effective health care system is currently under threat.

For a profession that is based on an intimate relationship between patients and their health care providers, the perception that hospitals are consolidating out of greed without regard for the consequences for patients could intensify the fraying of Americans’ trust in health care.

Regardless of its effects on decision-making, if patients perceive a quid pro quo between a physician and a pharmaceutical company (for example), trust has already been chipped away.

The 2018 Forum goals are to examine ways to build and nurture trust against a backdrop of political and social turmoil, and all-time lows in Americans’ trust in institutions across society.

We need to study the fear factor in American medicine, particularly as it pertains to perceived versus actual instances of litigation.