Are We Moving from Passive Patients to Active Consumers?


These were the questions I was asking myself when I sat in on a presentation by Intermountain’s revenue cycle manager at the Craneware Summit in Las Vegas. I think the clear answer to the first question is that patients are becoming more active. Patients are shouldering a larger portion of the cost of their healthcare and so now they’re move involved in the care they receive. Plus, the internet and mobile applications have made it much easier for a patient to be informed on their health.

The later question is much harder. What impact will this change have on healthcare?

I certainly don’t have all the answers, but it’s going to take a dramatic shift by the current healthcare system to adapt to this changing consumer. The days of the omniscient doctor (at least perceived) are gone and there’s now a shift to a more collaborative care model.

Of course, many doctors fear that this shift is going too far. They usually point to the overbearing patient who thinks they know better than the doctor. Certainly these patients exist, but they are the minority and aren’t a huge shift from the patients who didn’t listen to their doctor before the shift happened. The problem is that 1 rotten apple spoils the bunch.

Overall, I think this change will be a good thing for the healthcare system. There are a lot of things you can’t change in healthcare if you don’t have an active patient that’s engaged and cares about their health. Hopefully this will be the start of that movement to helping patients care more about their health.

If you want proof that things are changing, Intermountain has changed their mission statement. First, it’s not very often that an organization as large as Intermountain makes a major change to their mission statement. Second, think about whether this mission statement would work for your hospital or healthcare organization:

Change is in the air. What are you doing to prepare for the change?

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

1 Comment

  • According to the Meaningful use Stage 2 measures CMS has required the physicians to give 50% of their patients access to patient portals. Making it a core objective so now patients are required to become active and be engaged with physicians and other entities through patient portals.

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