More Employers Switching to ‘Consumer-Directed Health Care’ as Way to Control Costs

For health-care providers, Dr. Wright said the key challenge is that individuals, and especially cancer patients, will require more detail than physicians are used to giving, or may have time to give.

Study: Some Patients Lukewarm about Consumer-Directed Care

About 50% of patients still want their physicians to make the final treatment decision, according to a study funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The study of 2,765 patients, led by Wendy Levinson, MD, of the Department of Medicine of St. Michael’s Hospital of the University of Toronto, was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine (2005;20:531-535).

Although a total of 96% of respondents wanted to be offered choices and asked their opinions, 52% said they preferred to leave the final decisions on medical care to their physicians, and 44% preferred to rely on physicians for medical knowledge as opposed to doing research to find information on their own.

Women were more likely than men to prefer a consumer-directed, active role in clinical decision-making. Blacks and Hispanics were more likely to prefer that physicians make the decisions. Age was also a factor-preferences for active decision-making increased with age up to 45, but then declined.

©2006 The Triological Society