{"id":98164,"date":"2025-08-21T01:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T01:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/98164\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T01:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T01:26:10","slug":"u-s-health-care-patients-have-a-big-problem-with-medical-misinformation-and-disinformation-physicians-foundation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/98164\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. health care, patients, have a big problem with medical misinformation and disinformation: Physicians Foundation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a9 New Africa – stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Physicians need to do more now to stanch the flow of medical misinformation that threatens patient care, especially in rural America, according to The Physicians Foundation.<\/p>\n

A new study examines \u201cThe Effect of Misinformation and Disinformation on Physicians\u2019 Ability to Provide Quality Care,\u201d<\/a> and the effect is negative. Misinformation, which is false or inaccurate, and disinformation, false or inaccurate information presented to mislead someone deliberately, threaten patient safety by hurting the decision-making process and undermining the physician-patient relationship, according to The Physicians Foundation.<\/p>\n

A full 86% of physicians feel the incidence of medical misinformation and disinformation has increased compared with five years ago, and half of doctor respondents said it was a \u201csignificant increase.\u201d At least 57% of physicians felt the misinformation or disinformation has a significant impact on their ability to deliver quality patient care.<\/p>\n

Gary Price, MD, MBA
\u00a9 The Physicians Foundation<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t think that’s surprising,\u201d Physicians Foundation President Gary Price, MD, MBA, told Medical Economics. \u201cWe all know that misinformation has become a bigger issue in all of our lives over the last five years. A lot’s happened then. We’ve had COVID. We’ve had political use of misinformation and disinformation. We’ve seen foreign governments attempt to use it to influence our politics. We’ve seen people exploiting it seemingly just to get more followers on their podcast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Medical misinformation and disinformation has been around forever, including as part of every war in history, Price said. But in 2025, social media appears to play a huge role in the spread of inaccuracies, he said.<\/p>\n

Low confidence in patients<\/p>\n

The situation is worst in rural areas, where 38% of doctors reported encountering \u201ca great deal\u201d of misinformation or disinformation from their patients. That was greater than 21% of suburban physicians and 25% of urban doctors.<\/p>\n

Among rural physicians, 57% reported they were \u201cnot at all confident\u201d their patients know how to access evidence-based health information online. That was more than 37% of suburban physicians and 41% of doctors in cities. Overall that reached 40% of physicians feeling not at all confident in their patients\u2019 abilities to find accurate health information online.<\/p>\n

The Physicians Foundation survey did not identify a cause for the difference among rural, suburban and urban settings, Price said.<\/p>\n

High confidence in doctors<\/p>\n

While confidence in patients may be low to moderate, doctors have a great deal of confidence in themselves to dispel medical myths: 97% said they were at least somewhat confident in identifying and correcting medical misinformation or disinformation that patients bring to their appointments. Just 10% of doctors said they do not have the necessary tools and support to engage patients who are skeptical about modern medicine or science.<\/p>\n

\u201cInterestingly, when we asked physicians if they felt they were equipped and able to deal with it with their patients, 97% said, absolutely, yes, we are,\u201d Price said. \u201cI found that very surprising.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you take a look at what’s happened with one of the leading indicators of how well we’re doing with public health, vaccination rates, over the last five years, we clearly have not been able to cope with that misinformation and disinformation,\u201d he said. \u201cWe’ve let our patients down on that. And it’s striking to me that almost everyone thinks that they’re able to do a great job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who do you trust?<\/p>\n

In recent years, patient surveys about trust in professions have shown a slow erosion in patients\u2019 confidence in doctors. But when patients are asked about their own physicians, they rank their doctors very high in people they trust, Price said. In this survey, physician results may show a different placement in confidence: Low in patients, high in themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey’re supremely confident in their ability to talk with their patients almost to a one,\u201d Price said. \u201cBut yet they recognize that for at least half the patients, it’s a real issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this reflects a disconnect, and it’s a call to action for the scientific community, the medical community in particular, but especially for physicians and the organizations that try to help represent them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we’ve fallen behind in understanding how many of our patients are getting their information and what leads them to trust a source,\u201d Price said. \u201cAnd we can’t just deliver them the results of studies anymore. We have to learn to communicate and meet our patients where they’re getting their information where they’re placing their trust.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that’s something new for the medical profession,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a9 New Africa – stock.adobe.com Physicians need to do more now to stanch the flow of medical misinformation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253,66054,66053,66056,66055],"class_list":["post-98164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-impact-of-disinformation-on-patient-care","tag-medical-misinformation-in-rural-health-care","tag-patient-trust-and-evidence-based-medicine","tag-physicians-combating-health-misinformation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}