Dr Eleanor Perfetto Expects Increased Patient Engagement and Transparency

Patients will become more actively involved in their healthcare decision making as they become better informed, according to Eleanor Perfetto, PhD, senior vice president of strategic initiatives for the National Health Council. She also discussed the importance of providing transparency to patients so they fully understand their healthcare choices.

Transcript (slightly modified)

How do you expect to see patients become more engaged in their healthcare?

From the perspective of the National Health Council, the one thing that we look for is patient engagement, and we look for transparency for patients, and that information is understandable to them. As we head toward 2020, I think the most exciting thing that we’re going to be seeing is more patient engagement, and patients being actively involved in the decision making about their healthcare because they’re going to be so much better informed.

What impact do you think greater transparency will have on healthcare? Will it lower cost or just make patients more informed?

When I talk about transparency, I mean transparency to the patient. So, transparency in terms of what their choices are, so that they can be making good choices. Transparency in terms of the kind of plan that they’re in and that they’ve actually been placed in a particular program and that they know that they’re in that program, and they know what the program is about.

And transparency in terms of incentives. Making sure that they understand that the provider or the organization that’s providing care, if it’s getting some kind of incentives to provide a particular kind of care or to make certain choices, that the patient understands what those incentives are, what’s going on around them, that they may not have been aware of before.