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AMA-Led Health Sector Assembly Says Better Patient Information is Needed to Improve the Health System

Posted on: Thursday, 31 March 2005, 09:00 CST

Healthwise one of 60 leaders to address how to improve health care access, affordability, cost-effectiveness

Consumer health information is essential to improving the U.S. health care system, according to a recently published report by the 2004 Health Sector Assembly. The Assembly, which is led by the American Medical Association, meets annually to focus on core challenges facing the health care system. Healthwise has participated in the Assembly since 1999 to highlight the importance of providing health information to consumers to engage them in their own health and medical decision making.

"The 2004 Assembly report clearly demonstrates how far the group's thinking has come regarding the importance of consumer health information," said Donald W. Kemper, MPH, Healthwise chairman and CEO and participant in the 2004 Health Sector Assembly. "When given high-quality information, people make better health decisions, have better medical outcomes, and avoid unnecessary care."

The 2004 Health Sector Assembly met October 28-31, in Sundance, Utah, to focus on short- and long-term solutions to increase health care access, affordability, and cost-effectiveness. Kemper and nearly 60 other participants from public and private organizations, corporations, and institutions made five actionable recommendations for improvement. The importance of consumer health information is highlighted in four of the five recommendations:

1. Align incentives: Among the specific ways to achieve this alignment is to make "cost and value information ... readily available to the patient at the point of treatment decisions."

2. Process improvements with the use of information and information technology (IT): IT strategies should include the capability to provide "point-of-care information for patient care."

3. Patient information: This recommendation details that "clear and understandable information available to patients before, during, and after medical treatment will improve access and increase affordability ... Advances in technology will assist this process, but the content is more important than the technology."

4. Foster and expand informed choice: "Information is an essential element of care" to support informed decisions.

"The report is a huge step forward in recognizing that informing the patient is essential to improving health care," Kemper said.

Kemper has spent nearly three decades advocating a stronger role for health information. He leads Boise-based Healthwise, a nonprofit organization with a mission to help people make better health decisions. Kemper also founded the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Information Therapy to further the inclusion of prescribed information (called information therapy or Ix(R)) as part of a new patient-centered health care system. Information therapy is the timely prescription and availability of evidence-based health information to meet individuals' specific needs and to support sound decision making.

A copy of the 2004 Health Sector Assembly report is available at http://www.healthwise.org/hsa_2004report.aspx.

About Healthwise

Healthwise is a nonprofit organization that has been helping people make better health decisions since 1975. More than 60 million times a year people turn to Healthwise(R) information for help in making health decisions. Healthwise works with health plans, hospitals, disease management companies, and clinics to provide decision-support and self-management information to the people they serve. To learn more, visit www.healthwise.org or call 800-706-9646.

Source: Business Wire

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