Almost 50% Of Young Women Report Negative Healthcare Experiences, New Study Shows

For at least half the population, it may come as no surprise that women often have negative experiences in the U.S. healthcare system.

Still, a new report released this week from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) starkly illustrates just how poorly many women feel they have been treated by their doctors.

Among more than 5,000 women aged 18 to 64 who participated in the 2022 KFF Women’s Health Survey (WHS), 29% of those who had seen a healthcare provider in the prior two years said that their doctor had dismissed their concerns. One in five (19%) said their doctor assumed something about them without asking and 15% said that their provider did not believe them. Perhaps even worse, 13% said that a healthcare provider had suggested they were personally to blame for a health problem they were experiencing. Nearly one in 10 (9%) reported experiencing discrimination based on their age, gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, or other personal characteristic.

Overall, 38% of respondents reported having at least one of these experiences, compared to just 32% of men. Statistically significant differences exist between women and men when it comes to feeling dismissed by a healthcare provider (29% of women reported this experience compared with 21% of men). Similarly, 15% of women said their doctor didn’t believe them compared to 12% of men, and nearly twice as many women as men reported feeling discriminated against (9% compared to 5%).

Negative experiences were even more common for younger women. Among women aged 18 to 35 with a healthcare encounter in the prior two years, nearly half (46%) say they’ve had a negative experience with a healthcare provider. These figures were consistent for women in lower-income households (45%), women without health insurance (46%), and women with a disability or ongoing health condition (45%).

Delaney Rose, 32, administrator for Madville Publishing based in Largo, Florida, said she’s had a lot of negative healthcare experiences but one in particular stood out.

When she was 20 and in college, she heard what sounded to her like a gunshot while she was walking to class. She fell to the floor, thinking she’d been shot. It turned out that the medial collateral ligament (MCL) in her right hip had torn. When it did, she said, her kneecap hit the bone beneath it and shattered.

At the hospital, Rose was told she had a pulled muscle. They didn’t do an MRI. It wasn’t until she saw an orthopedic surgeon—who initially insisted, too, that she’d pulled a muscle—that she got an MRI and found out that her kneecap was badly damaged. She had been trying to “walk it off” for a month.

Rose reported that the surgeon told her, “Normally in these cases with damage this bad, we’d replace the knee, if you were like, an athlete of something, but clearly you’re not.”

The surgeon’s words stung.

“He emphasized the word ‘clearly’ and gestured to my entire being. I’m fat,” Rose said. “He had no way of knowing how many miles I normally walked a day, or that I had been planning to join a roller derby team. I didn’t say anything about it after that, either, I was mortified. I’d been struggling with eating disorders on and off, not to mention severe depression, and hearing that damaged me.”

Rose perceived that the surgeon was bored by her. He prided himself on treating athletes and made her feel like people like her were not welcome in his office.

“This was one of the first experiences I had that showed me that doctors weren’t going to take me seriously,” Rose said.

In the end, Rose got knee surgery but because it had taken so long to get surgery, it was too damaged to fix completely. Rose said she’s had issues with it ever since, including living in near-constant pain. Her knee is visibly deformed and Rose walks with a cane. She sometimes needs a wheelchair.

Rose later found out that she is has a condition called Common Variable Immune Deficiency, an immune deficiency condition. Doctors had been attributing Rose’s frequent infections to her weight. She said they typically assumed she was lying about her diet or symptoms.

“That’s how it has always been: I’m fat, so I can’t be sick and hurt,” Rose said. “This apathy from doctors has put my life at risk, both from ignored infections and injuries and from my own mental health.”

Dallas Waldon, 28, a small business owner in California, felt similarly dismissed by healthcare providers but for other reasons.

After a 2015 car accident, Waldon said she started experiencing sharp pain in her hands. She visited multiple doctors over the following year as she experienced neurological decline. Some days, her hands and arms lost strength and she’d secretly type with one hand at work. She would have debilitating stabbing pains and headaches.

Finally, Waldon said she saw a neurosurgeon who chalked up her symptoms to depression or anxiety.

“I felt like screaming, ‘This is not in my head!’ What would I need with a wheelchair if I was suffering anxiety?” she said. “But I was a little blonde girl that didn’t look sick and was dismissed by two more neurosurgeons.”

Like Rose, Waldon said she felt that one of the surgeons seemed uninterested in her case. She braced for him to reject or dismiss her.

But then, she said, he looked more closely into her eyes and did a new set of tests that showed him that she needed surgery on her brain and her spine.

Waldon feels lucky compared to many women who never get taken seriously and don’t have the chance to take the proper tests or get the right diagnosis and treatment.

“I am so grateful that I found a doctor who looked past my appearance and into my eyes,” she said.