Choice Matters How Healthcare Consumers Make Decisions (and Why Clinicians and Managers Should Care)

The direct-to-consumer business model has transformed how people seek out goods and services from music to mortgages. So what happens now that the revolution has come for healthcare?

While consumers have begun to insist on healthcare that is as convenient and personalized as nearly every other good or service they purchase, most healthcare provider organizations, physicians, and insurance companies remain woefully unprepared to meet this demand.

Choice Matters is the healthcare sector's guide to understanding and delivering the brand of consumer-centered care that is an imperative for the Zocdoc age. Drawing on the authors' diverse backgrounds in medicine, business, and public policy, this practically-oriented resource offers an on-the-ground introduction for clinicians and managers to better understand:

· The differences between healthcare and other consumer-driven markets
· What factors are most important for consumers in seeking care providers
· How consumers make decisions about healthcare
· The system-wide effects of increased consumer choice in healthcare
· The important distinction between patients and consumers

By celebrating the possibilities inherent to consumer-centered healthcare, Choice Matters offers a refreshing, empirically informed take on how healthcare in the United States can flourish, not wither, in the new economy.

Gordon Moore, MD, MPH, trained at the Massachusetts General Hospital and practiced for 40 years as a primary care internist at Harvard Community Health Plan and Atrius Health in Boston. He was one of the founders and subsequently Medical Director and Chief Operating Officer at the health plan, later becoming Director of Teaching Programs. As a professor at Harvard Medical School, he designed and implemented the New Pathway curriculum and directed the National Program Office of Partnerships for Quality Education, an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

John A. Quelch, DBA, is the Miller University Professor and Vice Provost at the University of Miami. He is also Dean of Miami Business School. He was formerly the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Harvard University.

Emily Boudreau is a PhD student in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Yale University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Section 1 Introduction

1. Introducing Choice

Section 2 Consumer Choice in the Healthcare System

2. Is Healthcare Special?
3. Conditions for Creating a Consumer Market

Section 3 How Consumers Choose

4. The Decision-Making Process
5. The Six E's of Consumer Decision-Making

Section 4 Responding to Consumer Choice
6. Consumer Segmentation Strategies
7. Making a Consumer Choice 'System' Work

About the Authors

Index