Involving Consumers in Health Care Decision Making

Patient satisfaction surveys will also help potential patients understand the environment they are about to enter. If a staff is rude and curt than the public will have access to this. Essentially, this will encourage health care providers to give optimal quality of service to each and every patient. Of course, it’s important that a patients expectations are not too grand. Nothing in life is perfect and people should understand this. Busy hours and numerous patients can cause fatigue. After all, health care providers are still human. Perhaps if all physicians were machines then we could expect them all to be perfect. Performance of medical procedures will enlighten a patient of how well a hospital is able to provide a service. This in turn will allow consumers to make the best choice when selecting a facility for providing care. Someone needing back surgery should be able to locate and choose a facility right for them. If a facility performs poorly with back surgeries, the public has a right to know so that they can avoid this. People have the right to make the most well informed decision. Facility treatment of patients should definitely be transparent. If a facility is trying to hide something it can’t be good. People have the right to know how well a facility treats their patients. This also encourages a facility to always do their best. Ultimately, everyone wants

The HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) survey is the first national, standardized, publicly reported review of patients ' perspectives of hospital care. While many hospitals have collected information on patient satisfaction for their own internal use, until HCAHPS there was no national standard for collecting and publicly reporting information about patient experience of care that allowed valid comparisons to be made across hospitals locally, regionally and nationally.

Healthcare is in a constant state of change with movements that impact rates, access and quality of care. Hospitals have become more competitive due to the rising cost of care delivery and the reduction in reimbursement from payers. This causes difficulty in delivering quality care to all patients, which is being measured by mandated patient perception surveys, Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS). HCAHPS scores are part of value

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This saying goes to show that investing in preventative care is the only way to effectively reform health care plans in America. It is no secret that there are many issues facing health care; however, the most important issue seems to be the lack of funding for preventative care. Redistributing health care related funds into areas like public health and preventative medicine can increase the overall quality of life for patients. If health care reform revolves around preventative medicine, then America’s standard of health will rise. A healthier society will lessen the demand for expensive life-saving surgeries, thus decreasing the overall cost of health care. The overall solution for this issue would be to set a realistic health care budget that correlates to the United States’ current standard of health, thus majority of the budget focuses on preventative medicine.

With patients today using the threat of reporting low satisfaction rates in the hopes of receiving faster or higher quality care, they seem to have taken the upper hand in some of the decision making of what will take place in the healthcare world (Sullivan). But is it really the survey results that will make the drastic changes that are needed?

A powerful force for change can be created by embracing transparency. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, “transparency is a broad-scale initiative enabling consumers to compare quality and the price of health care services so they can make their own informative choices among doctors and hospitals. This initiative is laying the foundation for pooling and analyzing information about procedures, hospitals and physicians services. In order to create value driven health care, there are four steps to turn raw data into

Medic-aid: This covers the destitute, pregnant women, individuals with severe physical disabilities, mental illnesses or addictions, seniors that require long-term care and people that need government support because of their financial status. But People in this category are not given much attention by the doctors as it is clearly written ‘poor’ all over their faces as soon as they present the type of insurance they possess. This means doctors lose money each time such patient consults them. A reluctant behavior is noticed by this group of people to seek healthcare even when it is needed, as many of them feel they will not be attended to or given proper care, due to the fact that they are unable to pay. Unfortunately, this is one of the causes of depression, morbidity and mortality.

After evaluating the results from the survey and interview, many things were considered. For example, majority of the results from the survey leaned more in favor of Pit Bulls rather than against. Majority of

Every individual in the world deserves to enjoy health and wellness. Maintaining or achieving proper health needs enables individuals to be productive at work and leisure. Traditionally, many people have had barriers obtaining adequate healthcare due to economic constraints or personal inconveniences. Despite impressive technological advances in medicine, the challenge of delivering quality healthcare to the Americans continues to be debated amongst the nation’s political and healthcare leaders. The aging baby-boomers and the increased number of uninsured people add to the equation of population growth which results in limited access to primary healthcare for the entire public. On the

Currently it is often difficult to make informed decisions about their care because of the opaque nature of health care pricing. Houk and Cleverly (2014) contend that pricing transparency could give health care providers a chance to garner increases in patient census; even if they do not have the least expensive price for a specific procedure, by allow health care providers the qualify why their services cost what they do. The demand for price transparency should be embraced in the future because it could create a forum that allow actual competition for patients and allow health care providers a chance to differentiate

In the United States the quality of health care that people receive changes in accordance to the region and is more than often just not sufficient. Because of the lacking care among these hospitals, federal policy makers and private organizations have put in motion a very important program that will collect and publicly report that gathered data on the quality of health care

As Americans, we pride ourselves in our rights and freedoms. The right to express ourselves freely, the right to bear arms, and the right to pursue life, liberty, and property. However, this has created an entitlement complex in the American people, making it difficult to discern who has the right to what. One of these issues of entitlement is found in the American Health Care system and who has the right to it. Simply put, the Health Care System is the diffusion of medical and health services to the public. However, a problem arises as there is much conflict on whether or not Healthcare is a personal choice or should be provided by the government. It has been a difficult decision-making process as there are extremes on both sides of the argument.

As a way to analyze and measure the progress of those six aims, the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey, or HCAHPS, was established to “compare ‘apples to apples’… and to support consumer choice” as well as a means to evaluate a multitude of hospitals on a common ground (HCAHPS Hospital Survey). HCAHPS surveys are provided to patients after their patient-care experience. The full print survey can be

In the latest survey, Americans rated the health system excellent with 6%as excellent, 27% believed the system is good, 39% graded as fair and 29% gave as poor. It is hypothesized that Americans have been misinformed by the fact that we can pay for top medical research, some of the most progressive technology in the world and the most current training and techniques for our clinicians. All these might unsighted the average American to the matters that are implanted in the health care System. No other advanced country is so displeased with their own healthcare system. Even if more is expended each year on healthcare, discontent steadily grows. Providers are more typically disappointed with the growing population that is being met which a lack of physicians and facilities which puts much more stress on them in the future. Rule makers are dissatisfied with the confrontation being met with citizens when frustrated with government overreach. Even though, rule makers are still persistent for health care modification to address noticeable systemic issues. Inclusive, there is a general disappointment with the American health care system.

Health care has moved forward with an emphasis on health care delivery and healthier people as a whole, as opposed to the traditional health care of the past. People used to go to different physicians to treat different conditions separately, and the physicians did not see the big picture of the patient’s health status, as they do in this day and age, by connecting these health care services under the same roof or network. Many times the patient would go to different physicians and would undergo the same tests, and their health insurance provider would have to cover these tests. Often times the patient would be sent out for testing that was not even necessary, and it would drive up the cost of health