Consumerism In Health Care Essay

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Consumerism in Healthcare
Health care consumerism within the United States is based on the idea of individual control over decisions involving their health care. This is a recent change from consumers relying on health care providers to make all of the decisions for them. The surge in consumerism has altered the health care system in how it is perceived, functions, and its economic standing. The health care consumer played a key role in passing of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Patients being viewed as consumers reshape the expectations and delivery of health care. It invokes a sense of liberty in decision-making, a value in options, personal responsibility, an access to relevant information for education, and a deserving of quality health care. Many hope this change will improve the quality and lower the prices of our nations’ health care. This change has been brought about by many factors: direct-to-consumer advertising, increased accessibility of health information, mobility of society, and our nation’s struggle to find better ways to operate a an effective and cost-efficient health care system.
Factors for Change
An article provided by Hone identified four major factors that he believes has shifted the power in health care to consumers. First, the direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs over the past decade influencing and empowering consumers to ask their physicians for particular brands. Patients used to accept and trust the recommendations of their health care providers usually without question. Second, the vast increase in health information readily available and often aimed at consumers for supporting their efforts on educating them on their health conditions an...

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...e. Employee Benefit News, (21)1, 12.

Huckman, R.S, Kelley, M. A. (2013). Public reporting, consumerism, and patient empowerment.
The New England Journal of Medicine, 369(20), 1875-1877 doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1310419

Meill, A., Ericson, G. (2012). The trouble with treating patients as consumers. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/01/the-trouble-with-treating-pati/

Shaw, G. (2012). Technology is key to growing consumerism trend in healthcare. Retrieved from http://www.fiercehealthit.com/story/technology-key-growing-consumerism-trend-healthcare/2012-01-12

US Department of Health and Human Services. (2010).Healthy people 2010. Retrieved from http://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topicsobjectives2020/overview.aspx?topicid=18

Winan, R., & Kasubski, D. (2011). What’s the attraction? Finding out why patients come to you. PT in Motion, 3(7), 16-22.

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