Seniors put off medical treatment because of stress

If you’re feeling stressed by your health-care experiences, you’re far from alone. About 40 percent of older adults experience “treatment burden,” which means they often put off or delay medical appointments or tests because of difficulty navigating the health-care system or finding the demands simply too great to handle.

The results, from a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study, also found that health services are not well coordinated among the various doctors an older adult sees, adding to the confusion. And while 96 percent of seniors surveyed by Johns Hopkins said they wanted to coordinate health-care options with their loved ones, the study found that doctors are not always open to allowing family members to get involved in making medical decisions.

The study urges doctors to “incorporate individual patient preferences” in their treatments to help ensure patients are “getting what they need out of their health-care experience.”