America’s Healthcare System Has Made Patients the Project Managers | Opinion
Somewhere along the way, care coordination quietly became the patient's responsibility.
America's healthcare system has shifted the responsibility of care coordination onto patients, despite the fact that they are not trained for this task. Patients with multiple chronic conditions are expected to manage their own care, including scheduling appointments, reconciling conflicting medical advice, managing medications, tracking test results, navigating insurance requirements, and recognizing when new symptoms require immediate attention.
This expectation is becoming increasingly unsustainable, as chronic diseases now affect most American adults, and many are living with multiple long-term conditions that require ongoing coordination. While healthcare has made significant advancements in diagnosing and treating diseases, it has not kept pace with the growing complexity of managing care across multiple providers, settings, and systems.
The burden of making sense of conflicting information often falls entirely on the patient, who must call offices, follow up on referrals, explain their medical history repeatedly, ensure records arrive where they should, and keep every member of their care team informed. When coordination fails, the consequences are often severe, leading to delayed treatment, medication confusion, missing test results, and unnecessary hospitalizations.
This issue is often framed as a system inefficiency, but for patients, it can mean unnecessary suffering, declining health, and rising medical costs. The author argues that care coordination should be recognized as an essential part of healthcare delivery, rather than an afterthought.
Brief written by urgent.news from Newsweek's own syndicated text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
