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Creating an Information Path to Make Transparency Actionable
By CHRISTINE MULDOON, WebMD HEALTH SERVICES
The transparency hurdle
The push for transparency is coming from all sides:
- Consumers are searching for credible information to help them compare price and quality information about hospitals and physicians. However, that often means they are evaluating vast amounts of data with limited direction.
- Employers are recognizing the need to invest in employees' health. At the same time, they are struggling with how best to arm employees with the tools to become better healthcare consumers.
- Health plans are under increased pressure to offer cost and quality transparency. They are responding, but cautiously, as they try to balance their relationships with members, clients, and providers.
While the market demand for healthcare transparency has been established, the challenges in effectively implementing it are becoming apparent. Making cost and quality information usable, meaningful, and understandable is one of the most difficult hurdles these stakeholders are facing.
Guide consumers through complex decisions
Healthcare consumers have unprecedented access to data from hundreds of sources: public and private, free and subscription-based, vetted and questionable, relevant and not. And their interest in using that data is exploding. However, consumers continue to face a number of challenges despite their interest in, and access to, healthcare information resources, including an incomplete understanding of how best to navigate them. Often, this proves frustrating and discourages ongoing utilization.
WebMD Health Services helps clients incorporate transparency information and guide consumers through the decision-making process. Just-in-time information helps them weigh cost and quality information wisely.
According to a Pew Internet and American Life Project report on Online Health Search, 10 million U.S. adults go online for health information every day, but 22 percent of them are frustrated by the lack of information or by their inability to find what they were looking for, and 25 percent say they felt overwhelmed by the amount of information they found1.
Healthcare is already complex. For transparency to be meaningful, it needs to be well-organized and easy-to-understand. Cost and quality information needs to be shared in familiar terms that demystify these complex decisions. Guiding consumers through the decision-making process is essential to creating and managing a successful healthcare experience.
Focus on awareness, education, and engagement
When faced with a diagnosis or procedure, consumers may not know all the decisions they need to make. Transparency initiatives must make consumers aware of what information is available, help them understand what the information means, and engage them to use the information to make better healthcare decisions. Once the consumer is engaged, the information path should create ongoing value by guiding the consumer through the decision process and presenting additional decision points.
A consumer-centric healthcare environment leverages a range of content, applications, resources, and programs to create an "information path" for a successful healthcare experience.
While cost and quality information provides value, it is just one aspect of the decision process. The opportunity for employers and health plans is to:
- Add context that helps consumers make sense of the information and use it appropriately,
- Give them alternatives and additional resources they should consider, and
- Introduce services and actions that are relevant options for next steps.
Transparency then becomes part of a well-marked path consumers can follow to improve their health and their healthcare decisions.
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