To be a patient today is to be treated as a consumer. But treating patients as typical proactive, in control, well-informed consumers can backfire. Asked to take on increasingly complex decisions and digest ever-larger amounts of information, patients find themselves placed — often by design — in the driver’s seat. High-deductible insurance plans aspire to make the cost implications of care more transparent and implicitly shift decision-making to members. The “empowered patient” movement encourages patients to become hyper-informed and to take control over their care. But providing greater information, access and autonomy — so often successful in consumer settings — does not necessarily drive better care or experience. Consider these cases:
- An unexplained black-out sent a 61-year-old Boston woman to the emergency room and set off a flurry of visits to specialists to uncover the cause. Each doctor needed records of the diagnostics from previous visits. Hospital policy, however, required that patient data be released only to the patient, meaning she had to return to the hospital prior to any new specialist visit. Requiring her to control the information flow burdened her in the midst of a medical crisis.
- After years of struggling with her weight, a New York mother underwent bariatric surgery. She was inundated with information from her medical team about how she would need to change her behavior. Guidelines around when, how, and what to eat or not eat — the rules were overwhelming and constraining. Before long her weight had jumped again. For this woman, an excess of information (along with an assumption that she was prepared to absorb it) was part of the problem, not the solution.
