Empowering Consumers

The Massachusetts Health Policy Commission (HPC) www.mass.gov has released select findings from research designed to understand consumer preferences and empower consumers to seek high-value community-based settings of care. A full report on the research findings is now underway. 

The HPC research conducted in conjunction with Tufts University’s School of Medicine and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is investigating what might lead consumers to seek routine care at lower-cost community hospitals as opposed to higher cost academic medical centers.

Community hospitals play a vital role in the Massachusetts healthcare system by providing convenient, high quality, and cost effective care for a range of services. Many patients however, travel to higher cost academic medical centers for care that could be provided in their community and not add cost to the healthcare system.

HPC recommends redirecting routine care from academic medical centers and teaching hospitals to community hospitals. HPC estimates that redirecting five percent to ten percent of community appropriate impatient care to high value community-based settings could lead to $43 million to $86 million in potential annual cost savings in Massachusetts.

The HPC in the initial research found that for less risky procedures, consumers consider cost the most important factor in selecting where they will receive care. The research also found that the majority of consumers will trust hospital quality information from their friends and relatives, but do not generally trust such information from their employers or government.

“These results demonstrate that consumers need clear information that they trust regarding quality and cost tradeoffs as they seek care,” said HPC Executive Director David Seltz. “Moving forward, objective and experience-based quality and cost information would help increase the use of community-based settings for routine care, which could net significant savings for the healthcare system and better care for patients.”

Also, based on the selected findings, the HPC recommends that employers and health plans should present tradeoffs to employees, including the relationship between plans, networks, choice, and premium costs.

The focus should be on financial incentives and consumer convenience for routine care and on quality measures for specialized and invasive care. Lastly, the use of objective and experience-based quality information needs to be produced to promote the use of community settings for routine care.