Rhetoric vs. reality: employer views on consumer-driven health care.

Raising the standard: practice guidelines and consumer participation.

Clinical practice guidelines are increasingly affecting the quality of health care, and have the potential to affect the availability of health care options for consumers. Deciding what guidelines will cover, how they will be developed and what they will say are, therefore, issues in which consumers have a considerable stake. While there is a growing acknowledgement of the need to involve consu...

Consumer Engagement in Health IT: Distinguishing Rhetoric from Reality

RATIONALE Policymakers want health information technology (health IT) to support consumer engagement to help achieve national health goals. In this paper, we review the evidence to compare the rhetoric with the reality of current practice. CURRENT REALITY AND BARRIERS Our environmental scan shows that consumer demand exists for electronic access to personal health information, but that techni...

The consumer-driven approach: can it pick up where managed care left off?

Managed care has failed and health care costs are once again out of control. Given the current political, social and economic environment, there are now two options: a single-payer health care system, or an aggressive and global employer health benefits redesign that strongly encourages consumer-driven behavior. This article discusses the failure of managed care and ways that employers can prom...

Consumer-driven Health Care: beyond Rhetoric with Research and Experience a Special Supplement to Hsr

Rhetoric and Reality in the English National Health Service; Comment on “Who Killed the English National Health Service?”

Despite fiscal stress, public confidence in the National Health Service (NHS) remains strong; privatisation has not hollowed out the service. But if long term challenges are to be overcome, pragmatism not rhetoric should be the guide.