Consumerism in healthcare is a term frequently used by people who work in health care to describe ways to improve health care delivery and patient-reported outcome measures around the needs of the end-user. Ideally this can be done through co-production and/or informed shared decision making.
Industry initiatives might also engage patients in the health care process, both to increase their involvement in the management of chronic conditions and to improve their work with health care teams.
The merits to this approach are that for many people this strategy fits into a model for incremental change based on end-user feedback, just in time learning to guide product development, and health care improvement.
Questions we can consider together are: How might health care systems seek to understand patient needs? And how might we best work together to support systems that implement this practice?
In this module, “Consumerism in Health Care, the Growing Voice of End-Users”, we explore these questions and gain an understanding of how the public and patients are shaping our health research system.
Comparative Effectiveness Research
Comparative effectiveness research is research aimed evaluating and comparing the implications and outcomes of two or more health care strategies to address a particular medical condition. The goal of comparative effectiveness research is to generate better information about the risks and benefits and costs of different treatment options in order to provide health-care decision makers—including patients, clinicians, purchasers, and policymakers—with up-to-date, evidence-based information about their treatment options to make informed health care decisions. * Content extracted from John Hopkins Medicine
Patient Centered Outcomes Research
The PCORI Board of Governors on March 5, 2012, approved in a public vote at its Board meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, the following working definition of “patient-centered outcomes research.”
"Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) helps people and their caregivers communicate and make informed healthcare decisions, allowing their voices to be heard in assessing the value of healthcare options."
This research answers patient-centered questions, such as:
- “Given my personal characteristics, conditions, and preferences, what should I expect will happen to me?”
- “What are my options, and what are the potential benefits and harms of those options?”
- “What can I do to improve the outcomes that are most important to me?”
- “How can clinicians and the care delivery systems they work in help me make the best decisions about my health and health care?”
To answer these questions, PCOR:
- Assesses the benefits and harms of preventive, diagnostic, therapeutic, palliative, or health delivery system interventions to inform decision making, highlighting comparisons and outcomes that matter to people;
- Is inclusive of an individual's preferences, autonomy, and needs, focusing on outcomes that people notice and care about such as survival, function, symptoms, and health-related quality of life;
- Incorporates a wide variety of settings and diversity of participants to address individual differences and barriers to implementation and dissemination; and
- Investigates (or may investigate) optimizing outcomes while addressing burden to individuals, availability of services, technology, and personnel, and other stakeholder perspectives. Note: This sentence was updated on 4/20/2012. The reason for the change is explained here.
* Content extracted from PCORI
- Video 1B: What is PCOR/CER?
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