Patients May Not Choose Quality Care Due To Plan Restraints

Recent studies on health care have been reviewed and have given interesting information. If patients are not cost constrained and do not have limited accessibility to doctors then reports that are made public about health care quality could motivate patients to choose better plans.

Medical Care, Jan 2009 issue had these findings published. This clarifies to some extent the reason for people repeatedly wanting better care but not prioritizing it when choosing providers. When individuals choose health care plans less than 5 percent said that their choices were based on quality information about the plans.

All this is based on an analysis of 14 studies by Faber and her colleagues. All the colleagues are based in the United States. When choosing a provider, quality information has competition from customer service, the ability to keep one’s doctor, out of pocket costs and premium.

The CAHPS program was an important source of quality data in the studies. When dissatisfied with the provider they have currently, patients are more sensitive to the quality of information on health care. Two factors – readability and presentation impacted how the readers would use the data.