CREATING CONSUMER CHOICE IN HEALTHC...

CREATING CONSUMER CHOICE IN HEALTHCARE: MEASURING AND COMMUNICATING HEALTH PLAN PERFORMANCE INFORMATION first ed Richard Curtis, Trisha Kurtz, Larry Stepnick, ed 1998 243 pp $42 paperback

This small volume presents material with such mysterious significance that it touches greatest in number of the people in the United States. undivided in three Americans is an employee cloaked under a health care plan (ie, employer providing a health care plan; taxpayers contributing to a state or federal health care plan; lawmakers or business race assisting in writing health care plans). The material in this work relates to all Americans. Everyone is touched with enjoying good, intelligible choices in managed care health plans, which, with self-same few exceptions, has not get to to pass. The two major failures noted in this volume are that true health care reform and significant satisfaction onward the part of health care consumer have not occurred

The editors not absent four basic roles of consumer purchasing clusters including maintaining baseline quality; encouraging employer to give consumer choices; adjusting premiums to contemplate risk and encourage provider expertise; and creating options for the uninsured. The authors then outline where these characters have succeeded and where they have not. Approximately 70% of available plans overlap competitors' plans.

This work includes an introductory chapter showing the book's layout, and the remaining chapters are reprints of papers written by way of faculty members of the Academy of Consumer-Choice Health Purchasing assemblages Although this book is not individual that I would recommend to the average reader, or equal the average health care consumer there are one people who will want to read it and still others who should be required to read it. This would be a extremely helpful book for a graduate bookish man in health care administration or business with a yearning to work in hospitals. Those who ne to read it include committee members researching employee benefit packages, board members searching for the best coverage for employee employee relations or human resource personnel and anyone responsible for drafting legislation affecting health care plans. tribe in these positions need to be be of importance toed with the key issues in this work including measuring and improving performance of plans, creating alternative services demanded according to consumers, and educating consumers forward how to access care appropriately.

The united drawback to this book is that it draws onward a lot of rich, in-depth historical data. Unfortunately, this have the appearances very dry and drawn on the outside for readers looking for a light read.

This part is available from Health Administration Pres single in kind N Franklin St, Suite 1700 Chicago, IL 60606-3491; (312) 424-2800

CLARENCE FENTON RN MSN CNOR PERIOPERATIVE NURSING CONSULTANT HIGMAN HEALTHCARE ST PETERSBERG, FLA

COPYRIGHT 2000 Association of Operating apartment Nurses, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group