Envisioning 2.0

A few weeks ago, I sent an invitation to a number of healthcare bloggers asking them to answer two questions about the growing consumer-driven healthcare movement. I’m happy that several of them responded to my request.

In this three-part series, I’ll be republishing their reponses to my questions.

Part two of this series features commentary from Dmitriy Kruglyak. Kruglyak is publisher of The Medical Blog Network, a leading community of healthcare blogs.

Click here to read part one of this series.

Q1: What does the term “consumer-driven healthcare” mean to you?

A1: Consumer-driven healthcare (CDHC) is a healthcare system that encourages
consumer awareness, informed choice, and decision-making based on open,
transparent, and credible information. This information includes availability, relevance, quality, and pricing of healthcare services, healthcare providers, and financing plans. CDHC empowers consumers to take greater control of and achieve greater satisfaction from their healthcare experience. Providers of healthcare offerings shall be considered “consumer-driven” if they are committed to publicly releasing the information relevant to facilitating the consumer choice.

Q2: What do you believe people need to know to become successful “consumers” of healthcare?

A2: Transparency, education and personal responsibility. [Meeting the] first two [conditions] will require providers of healthcare offerings to become “consumer-driven” according to my above definition. Successful healthcare organizations that manage that transition will reap the rewards. The resisters will be penalized by unfavorable consumer feedback through blogs and social media
channels.

Personal responsibility is the hardest one. It goes to the root of our culture since not everyone wants to be an active consumer. People must feel that it is their responsibility to actively manage their health, in a way that no one else is motivated to.

This entry was posted on August 15, 2006 at 11:43 am and is filed under Consumer-Driven Healthcare: What It Means To Me, Health Policy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.