Choice Matters: How Healthcare Consumers Make Decisions (and Why Clinicians and Managers Should Care)

Description

Choice Matters is the healthcare sector's guide to understanding and delivering the brand of consumer-centered care that is an imperative for the Zocdoc age.

Drawing on the authors' diverse backgrounds in medicine, business, and public policy, this practically-oriented resource offers an on-the-ground introduction for clinicians and managers to better understand:

• The differences between healthcare and other consumer-driven markets
• What factors are most important for consumers in seeking care providers
• How consumers make decisions about healthcare
• The system-wide effects of increased consumer choice in healthcare
• The important distinction between patients and consumers

By celebrating the possibilities inherent to consumer-centered healthcare, Choice Matters offers a refreshing, empirically informed take on how healthcare in the United States can flourish, not wither, in the new economy.

Key Features:

• A concise guide for physicians, administrators, and insurers to the new economy of consumer choice in healthcare
• Examines consumer-centered healthcare from both a system-wide and individually-based perspective, giving readers applicable measures to improve practice and efficiency in the Zocdoc age
• Combines a theoretically-grounded account of consumer behavior with real-world examples of choice in action
• Applies insights into consumer-centered healthcare from the perspectives of behavioral economics, management, population health, psychology, marketing, and public policy
• Offers an alternative to partisan takes on consumer-centered healthcare and the roles of individuals, government, and industry in the provision of care
• An actionable guide to integrating consumer choice into every aspect of care, from a patient's initial medical appointment to her insurance company's final payment
• Presents a change model that enables leaders to utilize consumer and market forces to improve their services and the healthcare system