Patient Consumerism, Healing Relationships, and Rebuilding Trust in Health Care

JAMA Network December 15, 2020
Dhruv Khullar, MD, MPP; Gwen Darien, BA; Debra L. Ness, MS

Public trust in the health care system has declined in recent years.¹ The reasons are manifold and include numerous secular trends that have contributed to rising mistrust in the United States more generally: skepticism of authority and institutions; the spread of misinformation; fracturing of the modern media environment; and high levels of economic inequality and political polarization; among others.¹

But a core dimension of the health care–specific decline in trust is a growing disconnect between what patients want and need, and what they see and experience. It is a disconnect between a transparent and trustworthy system that treats patients as humans in need of care and what many perceive as an increasingly consolidated, profit-driven system that treats patients as consumers...

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