To Improve Health Care, How Do We Build Trust And Respect For Patients?

Over the past several years, there has been a proliferation of health insurance benefit designs and tremendous growth in new care delivery settings that have moved health care beyond the traditional brick-and-mortar physician offices to retail and even virtual settings. In the face of these rapid changes, consumers encounter many more choices when they are shopping for their health insurance and health care. To better understand this evolving landscape, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) awarded grants for eleven research studies in 2015, under a funding opportunity managed by AcademyHealth. These studies are concluding in 2017, and they sought to better understand how consumers are navigating the health care system, with a particular focus on consumers’ experiences, preferences, and values. The studies cover a diverse array of topics, from the physician and hospital qualities that consumers value to whether consumers are engaging in cost-conscious, or value-promoting, behaviors in high-deductible health plans. While trust was not the explicit focus of any of the eleven studies, this portfolio has generated some enlightening early observations and findings around consumers’ trust in the health care system. People First One area of consensus across many of the RWJF grantees is that when it comes to making decisions about their health care and health insurance, most consumers rely on close personal relationships, with physicians being the top-reported trusted source ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Featured GrantWatch Insurance and Coverage Quality AcademyHealth Consumers cost-conscious behaviors doctor patient relationship Employer-Sponsored Insurance Health Philanthropy Mental Health patient perspective patient satisfaction Source Type: blogs