Becoming A Savvy Healthcare Consumer: A “Difficult Science”
Dr. Kent Bottles is in the midst of a very thoughtful multi-part blog post under the heading, “The Difficult Science Behind Becoming a Savvy Healthcare Consumer.”
Part I examined “the limitations of science in helping us make wise choices and decisions about our health.”
Part II explores “how we all have to change if we are to live wisely in a time of rapid transformation of the American healthcare system that everyone agrees needs to decrease per-capita cost and increase quality.”
Both parts so far have addressed important issues about news media coverage of healthcare.
The second segment included a nice plug for our HealthNewsReview.org project. It concluded:
Patients, the media, researchers, and clinicians all have to change if we are to live wisely in a time of enormous change and transformation for the American healthcare system. We must be willing to accept the limitations of science and be open to shared decision making that recognizes that there are trade-offs in any decision made in this uncertain and unpredictable place we call reality.
Bottles promises that Part III (coming soon) will describe how medical schools, payers, and employers need to change.
*This blog post was originally published at Gary Schwitzer's HealthNewsReview Blog*
Return to article »