Laboratory News

Consumers Want to Access Healthcare Information on Web

More evidence that consumers are prepared to actively engage the healthcare system to provide accurate information and swift access to health services comes from the recently-released 2008 Survey of Health Care Consumers  conducted by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions . The study covered a broad spectrum of healthcare preferences and practices among consumers. 

There were several significant findings. One, consumers desire greater access to convenient medical technology. Two, consumers want the information technology used to provide access to healthcare information and patient health records to be easy and intuitive to access and use. Three, survey respondents want customized insurance coverage. Four, consumers also want wider access to emerging innovations such as retail clinics. These latter two points have been regularly addressed by Dark Daily in recent years.

Deloitte surveyed a nationally representative sample of 3,031 ethnically and financially diverse Americans between the ages of 18 and 75.  Desire for access to more technology was one of the more interesting findings, as illustrated by the following points:

• 33% of consumers already go online to research medication information
• 22% use Web sites to research medical devices
• 88% of surveyed consumers would be interested in using home-monitoring medical devices that provide remote information about their conditions to their doctors
• 66% would like to use their doctors' Web sites to access information about health conditions, quality of care, and the price of medical services
• 75% of surveyed consumers want to schedule their medical appointments online
• 78% were interested in going online to access their medical records and their lab test results
• 76% were interested in an integrated electronic medical record that would allow physicians to access their complete healthcare history during an episode of care

Perhaps the most significant survey finding for the laboratory industry is that nine out of ten consumers surveyed, or 88%, are willing to do some form of at-home testing, and are willing to send the resulting test information directly to their doctor! As the FDA approves more at-home tests, expect tech-savvy consumers and patients will to be most willing to run their own in-home "lab" tests and be responsible to send the results directly to their doctors.

Such a development will have interesting implications for the laboratory profession, since laboratories will want access to in-home diagnostic test results to maintain a complete patient record of laboratory test results in the laboratory information system (LIS). Pathologists and laboratory directors may soon find themselves fighting the same battle to get relevant, important patient self-tests results into the LIS that they have fought to get point-of-care test results into the LIS.

Related Items:

2008 Survey of Health Care Consumers 

Fact Sheet Library of Statistics by Category from the 2008 Survey of Health Care Consumers