Patients aren't great at figuring out if they got excellent medical care

A new study finds that patients' opinions of the care they receive can be quite different from the actual quality of the medical care. More alarming is that opinions and experiences vary greatly by race. Researchers asked 374 women who had received treatment for early stage breast cancer at New York City hospitals about their opinions of the care they got. African-American women were less likely to report excellent care than Caucasian or Hispanic women, less likely to trust their doctor, and more likely to say they experienced racism during the process. There was, however, no difference in the actual quality of medical care they received, compared to Caucasian or Hispanic women.