There is a new train of thought in healthcare these days. It is called consumer

Question

There is a new train of thought in healthcare these days. It is called consumer drive healthcare. It is just like it sounds. The patient takes a more active role in their care. This can be done by doing their own research using the Internet. It might mean taking your blood pressure at home and then deciding if you need to see a doctor. You might be wondering why we would give this much control with the patient.

Is this new trend, beneficial or harmful to our patients? Are we asking patients to practice medicine?

Please be sure to include reference and link

Explanation / Answer

Consumer-driven health care (CDHC), defined narrowly, refers to third tier health insurance plans that allow members to use health savings accounts (HSAs), Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRAs), or similar medical payment products to pay routine health care expenses directly, while a high-deductible health plan (HDHP) protects them from catastrophic medical expenses.

This system of health care is referred to as "consumer-driven health care" because claims are paid using a consumer-controlled account versus a fixed health insurance benefit. That gives patients greater control over their own health budgets.

Other trends, strategies and business models that can be considered aspects of healthcare consumerism could include:

Pros and Cons:Health insurance does many good things. It reduces risk and helps people to get health care services that they could not otherwise afford. However, it also has some negative side effects. For example, insured people often use services whose cost is greater than their benefit. This is called "moral hazard" and it inflates premiums. Even if an insurance company pays the bills and an employer pays the insurance premium in the short run, ultimately employees have their wages reduced because their employer pays inflated premiums.

The intention of consumer-driven health care was to encourage employees to shop around for cost-efficient care, but few employees actually possessed access to reliable information about the cost and quality of their care, and while the consumer-driven plans encouraged employees to reduce their use of unnecessary health care, employees also reduced their use of necessary health care because they felt they could not afford it. Consumer-driven plans require employees to be able to differentiate between necessary and unnecessary care, which many medically untrained people are unable to do.

CDHPs aren't entirely bad, however. In fact, they show quite a bit of promise if they are applied correctly (and the advent of cost transparency over the last few years has also helped to inform consumers immensely, though we’ve got plenty of room for improvement).

The whole philosophy of consumer-driven health care plans is to put the power in the hands of the employees. And while these plans have quite a few flaws, they are most definitely serviceable if these flaws are corrected. If employees are educated on the difference between necessary and unnecessary care and provided with accurate information about the cost and quality of local care, consumer-driven health plans could become the new normal going forward.

links:http://www.griffinbenefits.com/employeebenefitsblog/consumer-driven-healthcare-cdhc-cdhp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer-driven_healthcare

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