Healthcare services are slowly changing.
Most recently, rising consumerism and new market trends have slowly ushered in an era of improved quality in healthcare services.
Consumerism along with government intervention has been responsible for lowering costs of behavioral health and addiction treatment care.
The future survival of behavioral health and addiction treatment, largely depends on providers’ changing present legacy delivery systems and becoming competitive in today’s marketplace.
The message for health providers is that their services must become much more transparent and responsive to patients, families and payers, who are paying the costs of healthcare. People want to receive their health services from organizations that truly care about serving them.
For Consumers, safety, quality services, cost of care and convenience have continued to be critical determinants of value for health services being purchased. As consumers take on more of health service costs through co-pays and tiered insurance programs many of them are turning to the Internet and other communications resources to make health purchasing decisions.
Increasingly, people will be weighing issues such as out of pocket costs, facility and ancillary services, quality care, successful outcomes and reputation as important determinants of value where they will purchase their healthcare services.
Community providers working together collecting and utilizing quality measurement clinical data will surely benefit from shared comparative reporting. Eventually, much of this community information will become available on-line, as well as shared directly with consumers through media communication links. Data driven messaging has added benefits by educating consumers and improving health purchasing decisions. These efforts have added to the rising tide of consumerism.
ACG offers an initial Phone Conference on CARF Issues and an assessment at no cost. (Call today 1-406 252-8147)
