Michael Anne Kyle – Health Policy Management, Harvard University
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The Job of Being a Patient
There is a lively literature in medical sociology and anthropology on what it means to be a patient and the experience of illness. In preliminary findings based on a national survey and 52 patient interviews, I argue that an increasingly prominent aspect of being a patient is bureaucratic or managerial work. Technological advancement has enabled health care to expand from the paradigmatic healer-patient interaction to a sector that accounts for nearly 20% of the American economy. This means patients are required to interact with the large bureaucracies that surround the clinical encounter, from processing paperwork to performing intermediary/ integrative functions between clinical organizations or between providers and insurers.