Listening to Consumers on Healthcare Reform

As Congress and the Obama Administration develop health care reform> initiatives, it’s important that consumers voice their priorities and concerns so we can create a health care system that works well for all Americans. A lot of health care reform ideas have fallen flat in the past, and one of the best ways to ensure that we make real progress this year is for policymakers to listen to consumers as they make decisions that will affect our health and our lives.

This week, a broad coalition of more than 25 of the nation’s leading consumer, labor and health care advocacy groups unveiled a set of nine principles designed to help health care providers, lawmakers, employers, and health plans consider consumer interests as they develop delivery system reforms such as the “medical home.”

A popular idea that is being tested around the country, the medical home is a medical office, health center or clinic that assigns a team of health professionals to offer personalized, coordinated, comprehensive primary health care to each patient.  This concept could profoundly improve health care by improving patients’ access to primary and preventive care, coordinating patients’ care across different providers and settings, and helping patients and their caregivers manage health conditions so they make the best possible decisions about their treatment.

However, in order to be truly ‘patient-centered,’ these new models of delivering primary care must address the issues that matter most to patients and their families. The new consumer principles include recommendations to do just that – deliver primary care that will emphasize high quality, comprehensive and well-coordinated care; enhance patient access to care; and engage patients and their caregivers in managing their health and making good decisions about their care.

The principles highlight that, in a patient-centered medical home, the patient must always be the center of an interdisciplinary team that guides care in a continuous, accessible, comprehensive and coordinated manner. The patient should always have access to care, even on the same day.  And the medical home should provide care that is safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable, patient-centered and family-focused.

We can create a health care system that works for everyone – health care providers, consumers, employers and the government alike. The new consumer principles are being distributed to lawmakers at the state and federal levels. They should pay attention to these principles, and to consumers, as they move forward.  The success of health care reform this year depends on it.

For more information on consumer interests in the medical home in particular and in health care reform generally, visit www.nationalpartnership.org/medicalhome and http://www.nationalpartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ourwork_hcq_HlthCareQltyPatientsRights&AddInterest=1342 .