Armed with 18 months of research confirming the suspicions of anyone who’s gone to the grocery to buy a jar of jam knew, two authors at the Harvard Business Review blog claim consumers don’t necessarily want more options when it comes to healthcare. A few quality options would be nice. In a survey of more than 20,000 consumers spanning economic and geographic spectrums as well as risk segments and insurance status (including uninsured participants) within the U.S., Booz & Company used techniques from the packaging goods industry to arrive at its findings. Here are some of the highlights that might shock (or at least surprise) payers and providers:
- First, we found that consumers don’t necessarily prefer more inclusive hospital networks. . . . When we subsequently surveyed consumers’ preferences for specific networks (using hypothetical bundles of actual hospitals and health systems in their local market), a small network with a high-quality system was far more coveted than other networks with a broader array of choices.
- [C]onsumers worried about receiving care for an unknown illness at some point in the future, find more comfort in knowing they will receive high quality care from a discrete set of facilities than in pondering a sea of options with little expertise in how to make sound decisions.
- In fact, having an in-network [primary care physician] is half as important as having a good hospital system in network and represents less than 5 percent of the value consumers attribute to their health insurance.
- . . . upper-tier brand of hospitals and health systems widely believed to be required in any network–well-known facilities, academic medical centers, and/or flagship institutions–are not always “must-have” to consumers.
As the article states, these consumer-driven concepts, straight from the horses’ mouths “run contrary to the truisms that have governed provider network design for the better part of 30 years.” Probably time to get on that.
