Literacy and Consumer Empowerment

A few of the highlights from external speakers at the Spring client event for Medco included:

Helen Osborne talking about the “Prescription for Savings: Using Health Literacy Principles in Your Communications.”

• Finding the right words for the best reasons
• Not about dumbing down but about smartening up
• Health literacy is a shared responsibility between patients and providers and each must communicate in ways the other can understand.
• Age, disability, language, cultural barriers, emotion, and literacy all come into play
• Eight ways to improve health communications:
  • Know your audience
  • Tailor communications
  • Create a welcoming and supportive environment
  • Communicate in whatever ways work
  • Confirm understanding
  • Offer ways to learn more
  • Weigh the ethics of simplicity
  • Collaborate for good communication
• Keep things clear, simple, and written for the end-user

“You need to develop an allergy to miscommunication and then turn that allergy into advocacy.”

Steve Case talking about streamlining healthcare by empowering consumers:

“I believe there is a degree of skepticism about managing one’s health, but we need to spend less time on the public policy debate and more time on how to change consumers’ thinking about health.”

• It may take time for consumers to get fully invested in the notion of taking charge of their health
• It took nine years for AOL to get its first million users and then rapidly jumped to 25M

“We want to engage people on the Internet and move them from a static situation, where they only go online when they have a problem, to a situation where they go back more habitually.”

• Many employers are frustrated with their attempts to get employees involved
• Revolution Health is working more with employers, hospitals and providers
• Revolution Health is now the top visited site (passing WebMD in January)