TY - JOUR
T1 - Themes affecting health-care consumers' choice of a hospital for elective surgery when receiving web-based comparative consumer information
AU - Moser, Albine
AU - Korstjens, Irene
AU - van der Weijden, Trudy
AU - Tange, Huibert
PY - 2010/3
Y1 - 2010/3
N2 - Objective: To get insights into the decision-making strategy of health-care consumers when confronted with comparative consumer information. Methods: Qualitative descriptive study among 18 consumers who had a hip or knee replacement no longer than five years ago. To study their decision-making strategies a paper draft for a website was used providing comparative consumer information. Data were collected by cognitive interviews and focus-group meetings and subjected to thematic analysis. Results: Consumers were able to understand the presented information, but had problems to use it as a decision aid. They primarily relied on previous experiences. Four themes were revealed: decision making, perceived benefits, unmet information needs, and trustworthiness. Consumers used different decision strategies and showed unpredictable behavior when choosing a hospital. Conclusion: Individual decision strategies, unsatisfied information needs, limited tenability and too coarse aggregation levels of quality scores are barriers for a proper use of comparative consumer information. Personal experience remains a valuable information source for hospital selection. We suggest that a website presenting comparative consumer information should be flexible in various ways and should include functionality to share personal experience.
AB - Objective: To get insights into the decision-making strategy of health-care consumers when confronted with comparative consumer information. Methods: Qualitative descriptive study among 18 consumers who had a hip or knee replacement no longer than five years ago. To study their decision-making strategies a paper draft for a website was used providing comparative consumer information. Data were collected by cognitive interviews and focus-group meetings and subjected to thematic analysis. Results: Consumers were able to understand the presented information, but had problems to use it as a decision aid. They primarily relied on previous experiences. Four themes were revealed: decision making, perceived benefits, unmet information needs, and trustworthiness. Consumers used different decision strategies and showed unpredictable behavior when choosing a hospital. Conclusion: Individual decision strategies, unsatisfied information needs, limited tenability and too coarse aggregation levels of quality scores are barriers for a proper use of comparative consumer information. Personal experience remains a valuable information source for hospital selection. We suggest that a website presenting comparative consumer information should be flexible in various ways and should include functionality to share personal experience.
KW - Consumer choice
KW - Consumer information
KW - Consumer-Quality-Index
KW - Decision making
KW - Qualitative research
U2 - 10.1016/j.pec.2009.10.027
DO - 10.1016/j.pec.2009.10.027
M3 - Article
C2 - 20006460
SN - 0738-3991
VL - 78
SP - 365
EP - 371
JO - Patient Education and Counseling
JF - Patient Education and Counseling
IS - 3
ER -