Introduction: American healthcare continues to undergo profound changes at a breakneck speed. Future challenges show no signs of abating. We feel the next generation of healthcare providers and administrators should be well informed on the many facets of non-clinical healthcare (regulation, delivery, socioeconomics) in order to guide healthcare systems and public servants towards better more efficient care. We suspect that few possess even rudimentary knowledge in these fields.
Methods: We constructed a 40 questions "Non-Clinical Healthcare Delivery" aptitude test covering diverse subjects such as economics, finance, public health, governmental oversight, insurance, coding/billing, study design and interpretation, and more. The test was administered to over 150 medical students, residents, young physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, physician assistants, administrators, and results tallied.
Results: There was across the board low aptitude in fundamental principles of non-clinical healthcare subjects. No single group performed particularly better than others. Almost all subjects showed profound gaps in knowledge.
Conclusions: We found that aptitude for fundamental non-clinical healthcare subjects was profoundly lacking across all major groups of healthcare providers and administrators. We feel this indicates a need for a far more robust curriculum in healthcare delivery and socioeconomics. Failure to elevate the educational standards in this realm will jeopardize healthcare providers' "seat at the table" in changes in healthcare public policy.
Patient Care: healthcare workers need to play an active role in guiding their systems and their public servants in improvement in healthcare delivery. we are identifying a need in more extensive education in these areas.
Learning Objectives: understand general aptitude non-clinical healthcare subjects in healthcare providers
identify key areas of need in healthcare delivery and socioeconomic education