Dig Deeper
Alliances need the different qualities of individual consumers and consumer advocates to improve health care quality in their communities.
Individual Consumers
A consumer is an individual who has personal experience with the health care system, either as a patient or caregiver.
Alliances seek individuals who have unique health care experiences to inform and enrich their initiatives. They also aim to influence the attitudes and actions of individuals to help them become savvier consumers of health care and better stewards of their own health.
Consumer Representatives
Consumer representatives, or advocates, are individuals who work at nonprofit, mission-oriented organizations that represent a group of consumers or patients.
They focus on the needs and interests of groups of consumers and patients, and they typically do not have a financial stake in the health care system. Because the public trusts them as an impartial source of information, their participation in Alliance initiatives is particularly valuable.
Unlike individual consumers, consumer representatives:
• Have a global perspective representing the diverse needs and wants of entire groups of consumers and patients;
• Use networks to empower and mobilize a community through email lists, websites, meetings, newsletters, conferences, etc.; and
• Often have relationships with the media, policy makers, and elected officials they can leverage.
What are some ways consumers can help improve health care?
Leadership positions and health care activism are a good start
Do consumers find certain performance measures—such as readmissions and avoidable complications data—useful?
Yes, but there must be context.
What are the benefits of personal health records?
They can help consumers and providers.
Why worry about hospital readmissions?
They are costly and often avoidable.
How do I retain consumers in my program?
Be supportive.
What is the Consumer Engagement Leadership Consortium?
An integral part of AF4Q's work.
- 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?