Patients in the Buffalo Niagara region want a health care system that treats them more like people, not conditions, that presents less of a hassle and that helps inform their medical decisions, according to a major survey released Tuesday.

The project involved gathering the opinions of more than 1,700 people across the region and is the first of its kind in the nation to undertake such an intensive review of consumer perspectives in health care.

The $1 million effort, half funded by the Community Health Foundation of Western and Central New York and the other half by the John R. Oishei Foundation, is viewed as laying the groundwork for quality improvements at hospitals, outpatient centers and doctors’ offices at a critical time.

Many of the findings go to the heart of a frequent frustration in medicine—the patients’ sense that their physician is rushed and the sense among many physicians that they must rush to maintain a thriving office practice and their standard of living.

“People want more time with someone they trust, but it’s unclear that it has to be the doctor if we adopt a team approach in medicine,” said Ann F. Monroe, president of the Community Health Foundation. “We need to find ways to redefine the health care experience by incorporating nutritionists, patient advocates, physician assistants and others into the team, and giving patients a greater role in decision- making.”

Congress and the Obama administration are attempting to reform health care, and hospitals in the Buffalo Niagara region are changing fundamentally under an agreement between Kaleida Health and Erie County Medical Center to work together.

But health care reform nationally and hospital consolidation locally, as mandated by a state commission charged with restructuring inefficient health care, lack the perspectives of the people who use the medical system, Monroe said.

“Are we as a community happy with the results we’re getting from our health care system, and, if not, how do we create the incentives to make things better?” Monroe asked.

In three key areas, those surveyed said:

• Doctors and hospital staff should establish a human connection with them by spending more time and offering more compassion.

• The health care system is too much of a hassle, with fragmented services, redundant paper forms and lengthy waiting times.

• Patients should be provided clearer information and timely guidance to help them make informed decisions and take care of themselves.

Now, Monroe said, health care leaders need to respond through such measures as creating financial incentives for improvements, adopting electronic medical records, encouraging patient advocacy programs and tracking performance on a host of quality-related measurements.

The foundation plans to maintain a Web site — www.rx4excellence.org — that will offer consumers report cards in a handful of categories related to the priorities identified by the project, which included help from the University at Buffalo Regional Institute. “The only way to succeed is to satisfy customers. We need to be transparent,” said Robert Gioia, president of the Oishei Foundation and chairman of the board of Great Lakes Health, the parent organization overseeing Kaleida Health and the medical center.

Davis, Henry. "Health care should be more personal, study shows." Buffalo News 29 July 2009.