Healthcare professionals not speaking to patients on gun safety
More than eight in ten (86%) adults say they have never had a doctor ask if they own a gun or if there are guns in the home.
Photo: Kazalia/EyeEm/Getty Images
Just 5% of U.S. adults say a doctor or other healthcare professional has talked to them about gun safety, according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation report on Americans' experiences with gun-related violence.
In 2016, the American Medical Association adopted a policy calling gun violence in the U.S. a "public health crisis" and since then, medical schools have increasingly offered gun-related content to train doctors about how to talk about gun safety with their patients, KFF found.
Yet the latest poll finds that more than eight in ten (86%) adults say they have never had a doctor or other healthcare provider ask if they own a gun or if there are guns in the home.
About one in four (26%) parents report that their child's pediatrician has asked about gun ownership and guns in the home, yet, overall, less than one in ten (8%) say the pediatrician talked to them about gun safety.
WHAT'S THE IMPACT
Experiences with gun-related incidents are common among U.S. adults. KFF data shows that one in five (21%) say they have personally been threatened with a gun, a similar share (19%) say a family member was killed by a gun (including death by suicide), and nearly as many (17%) have personally witnessed someone being shot. Smaller shares have personally shot a gun in self-defense (4%) or been injured in a shooting (4%). In total, about half (54%) of all U.S. adults say they or a family member have ever had one of these experiences.
Four in ten (41%) adults report living in a household with a gun. Among this group, more than half say at least one gun in their home is stored in the same location as the ammunition (52%), 44% say a gun is stored in an unlocked location, and more than one-third report a gun is stored loaded (36%).
The numbers suggest that clinicians could do more to provide education and insight on firearm safety. But it's not just a matter of public health: The healthcare industry itself is negatively impacted by gun violence.
In 2022 a federal committee found that gun violence injuries in the U.S. cost more than $1 billion each year in initial direct medical costs alone.
Healthcare costs are impacted in both the immediate aftermath of a gun violence incident and in the long term, owing to the physical and mental toll it causes. A study by the Government Accountability Office found that each year, firearm-related injuries cause 30,000 initial inpatient hospital stays that cost an average of $31,000 each, and 50,000 initial emergency room visits that cost an average of $1,500 each, for a total annual cost of more than $1 billion.
Yet that's likely a significant underestimate because it does not include physician costs, which could increase total costs by about 20%, the committee found.
The financial burdens on both survivors and healthcare providers are considerable. For those who required initial hospital care and survived their injuries, up to 16% require re-admittance at least once in the first year post-injury, costing an additional $8,000 to $11,000 per patient. In fact, survivors of gun-related injuries see their healthcare spending increase by nearly $2,500 per month on average for the year following the injury, with spending soaring by over $25,000 in the first month alone.
For victims of fatal firearm injuries, medical expenses totaled $290 million in 2020 and cost an average of $9,000 per patient. Much of these costs are paid for by public health insurance providers, such as Medicaid, creating significant and avoidable costs for these programs.
THE LARGER TREND
Uniformed Services University's (USU's) National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health released a number of recommendations last year it hoped would facilitate a better response to mass shootings from the healthcare industry, including readiness training and public education.
One recommendation that emerged was readiness training: regular, multidomain training activities that mirror the realism of actual events, to ensure readiness of the entire community system. They also recommended prior public education or immediate direction from web-based mapping programs about the appropriate hospitals to bring mass shooting patients for care.
Last June Kaiser Permanente announced it was establishing a new Center for Gun Violence Research and Education that will focus on gun violence prevention, part of the health system's response to shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and elsewhere.
Through the Kaiser Permanente Task Force on Firearm Injury Prevention, established in 2018, the system is also supporting research studies and testing firearm screening tools and counseling interventions that focus on how physicians and clinicians can help prevent firearm injuries.
Twitter: @JELagasse
Email the writer: Jeff.Lagasse@himssmedia.com
