TY  - BOOK
AU  - Newhouse,Joseph P.
AU  - Ware,John E.
AU  - Donald,Cathy A.
ED  - Rand Corporation.
ED  - United States.
TI  - How sophisticated are consumers about the medical care delivery system?
T2  - Health insurance experiment series
SN  - 0833003208
AV  - RA395.A3 N48 1981
PY  - 1981///
CY  - Santa Monica, CA
PB  - RAND
KW  - Medical care
KW  - United States
KW  - Public opinion
KW  - Consumer Participation
KW  - Delivery of Health Care
N1  - "April 1981."; Includes bibliographical references (p. 23-24); Also available on the internet via WWW in PDF format
N2  - A study of consumer knowledgeability about medical care services and its effect on the role consumers might play in decisions affecting resource allocation, especially whether competition and/or cost-sharing strategies should be pursued or whether regulatory strategies are more promising.  An important goal of the study was to derive a scale that would permit measurement of the extent of consumer knowledge.  Analyses of a ten-item questionnaire administered to nonaged persons showed that consumers are knowledgeable about some areas of medical care and uninformed about others.  If a procompetitive medical care strategy is pursued, consumers need to be educated about board certification, staff privileges, and other factors pertinent to choosing a regular source of medical care.  Factor analyses indicated that a substantial amount of information from item responses can be summarized in a multi-item scale that is reliable and valid as a measurement of patient sophistication
UR  - http://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R2693/
ER  -