Consumer Engagement

What is a Consumer?

One of the major goals of Quality Counts is to help patients and consumers to take a more active role in their care and to make better healthcare choices. There are three goals for the consumer engagement work:

· Consumers understand what quality is

· Consumers use quality information to make healthcare choices

· Consumers become more involved in managing their health

What is Healthcare Quality?

When you shop for a product or service, you will very often do research to compare the quality of your possible choices. For example, you might use Consumer Reports to find out how one car compares to another.

Like a product or service, doctors and hospitals can be rated and compared based on quality. A higher quality doctor or hospital is less likely to make mistakes. Mistakes (or medical errors) can be anything from giving people the wrong medicine or mixing-up one person’s medical records with someone else’s to accidentally doing surgery on the wrong person. Doctors and hospitals who make fewer mistakes often use steps and procedures to double-check everything that they (and the people who help them) do to make a patient healthy again.

No one can tell if their physician is high quality just based on beside manner, how friendly the doctor is, or the fact that they have never heard of their physician making any mistakes. One way for a consumer to help know if a physician is of the highest quality is to visit an objective, trustworthy, third-party website like www.mhmc.info.

Websites such as www.mhmc.info look at many numbers and facts to rate quality. MHMC.info looks at things such as how well a doctor’s office helps patients with a chronic illness (such as diabetes) or whether they follow procedures that are proven to reduce mistakes (such as using electronic medical records).

How Can Consumers Make a Difference in Healthcare Quality Improvement?

Choosing a doctor or hospital based on quality can help improve the quality of care that you receive. In addition to helping yourself, making choices based on quality can help improve healthcare for everyone. By letting providers know that quality is important to you, it makes them more likely to improve their quality

What is an Engaged Consumer?

An engaged consumer is someone who makes healthcare choices based on quality and takes an active role in managing their own care. Engaged consumers feel “empowered” to ask questions of their providers, to learn about their health conditions and treatment options, and speak up if they feel something is going wrong with their care. Examples empowered behaviors include:

– Finding and using basic information that is relevant to their health status

– Deciding when and how to access appropriate healthcare services (for example, when to go to the doctor instead of going to the emergency room)

– Feeling confident in asking questions of their providers

– Making an active choice of healthcare providers based on multiple sources of information

– Self-managing their chronic illness (such as diabetes, asthma, cardiovascular disease)

– Understanding the health plan benefits available to them

How Does Someone Become An Engaged Consumer?

There are many materials and training opportunities available through Quality Counts and its partner organizations.  Consumers can also actively take part in efforts to improve quality.  Learn more by visiting our Quality Counts for ME page.