This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Patient-Physician Communication  • Alert me on articles by topic

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: Dr Alexander and colleagues¹ found that 63% of patients reported a desire to talk about out-of-pocket expenses with their physicians and that 79% of physicians believed that patients wanted to discuss these costs. Only 35% of physicians and 15% of patients, however, recalled ever having discussed out-of-pocket expenses during a consultation.

This disparity was a predictable result of the way that these preferences were derived. The authors compared stated preferences (what individuals say they want) with revealed preferences (what individuals actually choose to do).² These 2 types of preferences would be expected to differ because an individual's desires are often limitless while their choices are limited by many different constraints (in this case patient-physician communication is limited by time).³ For example, a physician and patient may want to discuss many things, but they have to prioritize items for discussion because of time constraints.

It would have been . . . [Full Text of this Article]

John F. P. Bridges, PhD
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Case Western Reserve University
School of Medicine
Cleveland, Ohio

RELATED ARTICLES

Factors in Studying Patient-Physician Communication—Reply
C. Caleb Alexander, David O. Meltzer, and Lawrence P. Casalino
JAMA. 2003;290(19):2544.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Patient-Physician Communication About Out-of-Pocket Costs
G. Caleb Alexander, Lawrence P. Casalino, and David O. Meltzer
JAMA. 2003;290(7):953-958.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT