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Promoting Consumers' Demand for Evidence-Based Medicine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2009

Gianfranco Domenighetti ,
Roberto Grilli  and
Alessandro Liberati
Gianfranco Domenighetti
Affiliation:
Sezione Sanitaria
Roberto Grilli
Affiliation:
Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri
Alessandro Liberati
Affiliation:
Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri
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Abstract

The widespread implementation of rationing and priority-setting policies in health care opposes the stochastic practice of medicine induced by professional uncertainty and professional vested interests in market-oriented clinical environments. It also clashes with consumers' overly optimistic and “mythical” view of the effectiveness of medicine, which is bound to support a potentially unlimited provision of health services. Thus, for consumers and society at large, it is necessary to create conditions favorable for a more conscious demand of evidence-based health care. In pursuit of this goal, we suggest the adoption of a community-oriented strategy based upon delivery of information to the public in order a) to generate greater awareness (“healthy skepticism”) among consumers, through disclosure of data on the true effectiveness of health care interventions and on the existing variation in their utilization, and b) to provide tools to empower consumers in dealing better with both the uncertainty in their own individual patient-physician relationships and with the health policy issues to be faced in the future. Such a community-oriented strategy could also reinforce and support, through the generation of a “bottom-up” pressure from consumers toward physicians, a wider adoption of evidence-based interventions by health care professionals. This paper, using data from surveys on public opinions and attitudes toward the practice of medicine, focuses on how consumer demand for more evidence-based medical practice can be promoted.

Type
Special Section: The Consumer And Technology
Information
International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , Winter 1998 , pp. 97 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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