Consumerism in Healthcare

With healthcare premiums continuing to rise past 10% and 20%, individuals will continue to assume more of the costs for their own care acting less like passive users and more like consumers of health services and benefits.

With this in mind, hospitals, health systems, integrated delivery systems, managed care organizations and the physicians within them, will have to continue to organize and communicate effectively with each other to meet the demands of a more consumer-oriented healthcare marketplace.

Traditional buyers - employers and the government - will not only shift more of the costs to individuals, they will continue to push for improvement in the outcomes of healthcare delivery while managed care is heavily influenced by a renewed, vigorous, buyer focus on cost containment and technology.

Medical groups, hospitals and Integrated Delivery Systems (IDS) must examine physicians' operations, as well as their role in the delivery of healthcare services. These trends will require physicians and health administrators to understand:

• Consumer demands will be powerful and it will take physicians practicing in larger groups, merging assets, and embracing information technology to achieve competitive advantage and success;
• Physicians and administrators will need to create the information systems and management infrastructure to manage their business effectively;
• They must anticipate and respond to the consumer movement evident in the growing use of benchmarks to judge various aspects of healthcare, from quality to customer service; and
• They will have to provide care and treat patients more cost effectively with better service by reducing variations, implementing best practices, and emphasizing and adhering to case and disease management protocols.

IDSs and other healthcare plans and providers also need to understand healthcare marketing in the "Age of Consumerism." This understanding involves knowledge of the customer market and the specific segments within it, as well as the ability to develop, price and sell products targeted to those segments.