Consumerism in Health Care: beyond the supermarket model

Abstract

The emphasis on consumerism is very new to managers in the health service. This article asks how significant supermarket consumerism is and explores other models of consumerism in health care: community health councils, democratic accountability, user power, provider user partnerships. The need to reduce the disparity of power between users and providers of the health service is seen as the key factor in attempts to develop meaningful consumerism. The author puts forward six mechanisms to do this and illustrates how these mechanisms can be developed with examples from one community health council.