Helping Tomorrow's Health Care Consumers

Abstract

Health care is changing dramatically for those who seek care and for those who deliver it. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will bring health care coverage to millions of consumers who previously could not afford or did not want health insurance. For many people, the health benefit exchange experience will present them with a variety of choices and complexities to consider. These choices will be very individual and difficult. Others may need to make health care decisions, as individuals, perhaps for the first time. Tomorrow's health care consumers will reflect great diversity in race, ethnicity, language, and culture. They will have varying experience and confidence to make health care decisions. Tomorrow's health care consumers will be asked to make many difficult health care decisions and become more personally and financially accountable for their decisions. Experience and research has demonstrated that consumers are currently being overwhelmed by the flood of information they receive and by all the decisions they need to make. Tomorrow's health care consumers will need, more than ever, simple, accessible, understandable, and actionable health communications. At UnitedHealth Group, we are aware of the role that health literacy plays in the provision of high quality, safe, effective, and efficient care. We appreciate the research that has explored the relationship between health literacy and access to and utilization of health care, provider and patient interaction, as well as self-care. Health insurers need information to answer the following questions: What health literacy interventions work, and what works best? What is the evidence that health literacy can improve long-term health outcomes and that it affects health status and quality of life? Is there information that tells us how individuals with varying degrees of health literacy may respond differently to various engagement strategies? Is there a literature review that looks at studies that make “the business case” for health literacy? How can the health literate care model suggested by Koh, Brach, Harris, and Parchman (2013) be incorporated into tomorrow's health care system? Understanding that the language of health is a key to living a healthier life is a key for tomorrow's health care consumer. Tomorrow's health care system needs evidence-based recommendations for helping people access, understand, and use health communications. These research findings must be scalable into larger operational organizations. We recommend that health literacy researchers plan their studies with a goal of helping large numbers of health care consumers better access, understand, and use health communications.