Supporting informed consumer health care decisions: data presentation approaches that facilitate the use of information in choice

To make informed choices and navigate within a complex health care system, consumers must have easily available, accurate, and timely information, and they must use it. Contrary to the consumer-driven approach, however, the evidence demonstrates that having an abundance of information does not alway...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annual review of public health 2003, Vol.24 (1), p.413-433
Main Authors: Hibbard, Judith H, Peters, Ellen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Comprehension
Consumer Behavior
Decision Making
Health care
Health Services Needs and Demand
Hospital Charges
Hospitals, Community - classification
Hospitals, Community - economics
Hospitals, Community - standards
Humans
Information Services - standards
Information Services - supply & distribution
Information Services - utilization
Quality Indicators, Health Care
United States
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:To make informed choices and navigate within a complex health care system, consumers must have easily available, accurate, and timely information, and they must use it. Contrary to the consumer-driven approach, however, the evidence demonstrates that having an abundance of information does not always translate into its being used to inform choices. The challenge is not merely to communicate accurate information to consumers, but to understand how to present and target that information so that it is actually used in decision-making. This paper reviews what is known from studies of human judgment and decision-making and discusses their implications for supporting informed consumer choice. We delineate the types of decisions that consumers and patients are making, the barriers to using information effectively in choice, and draw upon the evidence for the efficacy of different presentation strategies to propose an initial framework for evaluating and choosing comparative information presentation approaches.
ISSN:0163-7525
1545-2093
DOI:10.1146/annurev.publhealth.24.100901.141005