Health consumer diversity and its implications

Health care consumers no longer want to be passive receivers of treatment and care, they want to be involved. This shift is driven by the new information technology and a ‘social revolution’. Easy access to health information, thanks largely to the Internet, and active health consumer organizations have provided consumers with enabling independent health information. Individual consumers are also more willing to enter into a dialogue, participate and influence decisions concerning their own care. At the same time the consumer role becomes more diverse. Populations in many countries today are culturally, socially, and demographically diverse. Understanding consumer diversity is one of the greatest challenges facing health care providers. There is a risk that the quality of health care provided to consumers can vary depending on the skills of the professionals to tune into the values and preferences of the individual consumer. Health care providers need to listen to and incorporate consumers’ experiences into their health service offerings in new and creative ways. They need to engage in a dialogue with various consumer groups using multiple channels. There is a need for a new business logic, which would structurally help the providers, on an individual basis to deal with more sophisticated health care consumers. This is a review paper and provides a framework and a set of strategies for dealing with health consumer diversity. We draw on three interrelated theories — open systems theory, service management research and the concept of consumer segmentation to understand health care consumers’ attitudes and behaviour, and their expectations.