Healthcare and the consumer in the same sentence was unheard of in the early years. This was mainly because the consumer has left it all out for the healthcare profession to handle its health needs with little or no questioning at all. You as the consumer left it out to the doctors to manage your blood pressure, infections and medication with little argument as ‘the doctor is always right’ mentality was deeply driven into your thinking. As a result, the professionals always think that you the consumer have very little knowledge on the matter and always have the backing of the science language behind them. This technical and obscure reality is a scary one as the healthcare system when left unchecked with no follow up questions at all leads to overpricing and poor quality.
Until recently, most of the Canadian population (about half of the population), received its healthcare from their employees with the rest of the population receiving it from many forms of governmental backed schemes such as Medicare, Medicaid, or the Veteran’s Administration. This shows just how out of touch most of you are from the healthcare sector as you always assume someone else is dealing with it. The only place most of you, the Canadian population, know about the cost of healthcare is in pharmacies when buying over the counter drugs and in the Lasik Surgery and Cosmetic Dermatology Company. The latter two are also being delivered by the physicians. The only difference being that they do not use insurance and you will have to get money from your pocket so as to be offered the service. This means that the consumer is also out of touch with the healthcare sector here too.
This disconnect between you the consumer and the healthcare sector has been the major reason for the intervention coming from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). With the cost of healthcare being on the steep incline, most employers have started shifting some of the healthcare costs to the employees in ways such as high health plans that are deductible, and co-pays. This was said to take time to be felt or realized by you the consumer during the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic has resulted in opening of the eyes and minds of you, the consumer, to the hard reality of how expensive healthcare really is and how the medical sector has taken the consumer for granted. The healthcare executives mostly worked on three things that they thought the consumer could evaluate about their care:
1) The timeliness of getting seen;
2) How friendly staffs were;
3) The cleanliness of the facility; and sometimes the quality of food if it involved a stay.
This mantra changes once the pandemic set in as more and more of the consumers are asking for better quality that has brought focus on the healthcare industry. This will in turn bring greater accountability for care delivery and greater transparency and accountability in not only the costs, but also in the quality set.
