Health Care in the Future
The recurring theme for April´s Benefit Vertical will be health care and although we will concentrate on cost containment, we will touch on different aspects of this overall subject.
Let us start by stating the following premise: Americans, as a majority, view the cost of health care as one of the least important factors when considering health care quality. Recent survey results conducted by the Employee Benefits Research Institute (EBRI) have shown that even though overall American satisfaction with health care quality is high and few are happy about the cost of health care, Americans in the majority tend to ignore the cost of benefits where considering health care quality.
So accepting this premise as true, what does this tell us? Probably that most Americans look mainly at their own health providers when judging quality of health care. The public at large look at factors such as perceived skill, experience, training, communication skills, willingness to listen, and timeliness of physician dealing with their issues and whether they have any choice in treatment alternatives. Unfortunately, unless those members of the public are trained in medical matters, their so-called perception of their physician´s abilities may not be entirely accurate. As a whole, unless mandated by their company´s provided medical plans, they probably do not venture far outside of the box in considering alternatives, whether those alternative simply involve another provider, alternate treatment strategies, cheaper treatments, alternative medications, etc. They need to consider second opinions, alternative therapy, surgery and medication including generic prescriptions, as appropriate to their situation.
More importantly they need to become more engaged in the whole process and become their own advocates and make sure that in every case, they are aware of all the options available to them, what the various costs are for each of the options, and have enough information to determine what makes sense in their circumstances. In order to improve the quality of healthcare in the future, the public needs to become better consumers. And they need to accept more responsibility for their health care.
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