Question

describe the impact of consumers on health care quality manamgement/improvement programs.

Answer 1

The impact of consumers on healthcare quality management/ improvement programs extensively depends on role of consumer engagament and their activation. As there are variety of health plans available to choose from, they focus on cost and quality information, and understand the treatments of complicated medical information. In addition to this, they also get informed about the chronic conditions and preventive medical treatment. Generally, customers are not displaying their expected behaviors. To promote those bahavior, there is a need to activate consumers as agents for their own health care and management.

Another aspect, Consumer decision making is a part of Consumer Activation. Meetings are held to discover how the consumers makes decisions, especially in the areas of health plans, service providers, and treatments.

• Choosing a Health Plan - In most cases, consumers do not have proper knowledge and differentiation in health plans, however, they choose for the high-quality and low cost health plans. The major components that consumer consider while choosing health plans are : appointment of specialists and senior doctors, costs, quality of service provided, administrative burden of a plan etc.
• Choosing a Service Provider - The research on service provider choice is relatively less as compared to health plan choice. It is based on the quality of service and not on costs as there are insurance shields to cover the service provider costs,
• Choosing Treatment - Proper information should bee gathered to make good treatment decisions. The focus must be given on the values and payment of trade-offs. There is a direct link betwen quality of treatment to the quality of care. Good treatment can improve quality of life at the time of treatment and ultimately brings positive results in health outcomes.