Dig Deeper
As a consumer leader with your Alliance, you represent consumers who use health care in your community. By honing your leadership skills, you can use your knowledge and experience to inform other stakeholder leaders about the unique needs of local consumers, ensure that initiatives are relevant, and mobilize consumers to take action and help facilitate change.
Effective consumer leaders have several tools they can use to define roles, facilitate action, and ensure accountability, such as:
1) Defining your role using the person-role-system framework;
2) Interest-based negotiation that relies on collaboration to produce mutually beneficial solutions;
3) Proposal-based decision making that helps groups converge around options everyone can support; and,
4) An accountability pathway to help group members gauge progress and determine what they need in order to make and keep commitments.
Building strong partnerships with the other stakeholders at the table can be tricky. But for every challenge, there is a counter-strategy. For instance, consumer leaders often need a lot of time to influence and activate their networks. Managing each stakeholder’s expectations can ensure adequate time is given to consumer leaders to accomplish their assigned tasks.
“Don’t underestimate your importance at the table, of keeping your communities moving forward in the face of competing interests and large organizations that have their own interests.”—Rhonda Moore Johnson, AF4Q National Advisory Committee and medical director, health equity and quality services, Highmark, Inc.
What are some ways consumers can help improve health care?
Leadership positions and health care activism are a good start
What role do employers play in reaching consumers?
Communications and incentives are just a small sample.
Why worry about hospital readmissions?
They are costly and often avoidable.
How can my organization make our health care quality website more consumer friendly?
There are 3 key questions to answer.
How do you explain the idea of “high-quality health care"?
The answer varies, but understanding it is paramount.
What are the differences and similarities between consumer advocates and individual consumers?
Organizations need both to be successful.
- Why do consumers need to know how much things cost?
- How do we help employers maintain their interest and energy in our partnership?
- What role do employers play in improving care quality?
- What frameworks can I use to engage and activate consumers?
- What are the benefits of personal health records?
- What is the Consumer Engagement Leadership Consortium?
- Where should I incorporate consumers into my practice or hospital?
- How do you explain the idea of “high-quality health care"?
- How do I clarify my role as a consumer within my organization or Alliance?
- How do I become a better consumer leader?