Health Affairs -- Comments on: Evidence That Consumers Are Skeptical About Evidence-Based Health Care

Evidence That Consumers Are Skeptical About Evidence-Based Health Care -- abstract/free full access

Note: some key excerpts (U.S. research):

"Beliefs And Values Study participants consistently voiced a number of values and beliefs that were at odds with evidence-based approaches." "All Care Meets Minimum Quality Standards: Although focus-group participants could envision a health care provider’s making an occasional mistake, they found it hard to believe that providers could deliver truly substandard care—and certainly not their own providers."
"Behaviors In The Medical Encounter Our survey results indicate that many consumers do not engage in behaviors that could be beneficial to them during medical encounters. More than half of the respondents had never taken notes during a medical appointment (55 percent) or brought online information to discuss with their doctor (60 percent). Almost half had never brought someone to provide support or advocacy (44 percent). In addition, 28 percent of the respondents had never brought questions to ask their doctor (Exhibit 3)."
"Effective communication with and support of consumers is essential to improving the quality of health care and containing health care costs. Clearly, consumers will revolt if evidence-based efforts are perceived as rationing or as a way to deny them needed treatment. Policy makers, employers, health plans, providers, and researchers will thus need to translate evidence-based health care into accessible concepts and concrete activities that support and motivate consumers. A necessary condition for effective communication, after all, is to start where your audience is—even if that is not where you hoped or expected it to be."