Developing Consumer-Centered Healthcare Public Reports

One of the key challenges for designers of healthcare public reports is the development of a presentation format that accurately communicates the variability in the quality of care among hospital systems. The key to designing effective interfaces for these reports is an understanding of the healthcare consumer’s decision making process when selecting a medical provider based on the report data. To better understand this process, 20 participants were placed in a hypothetical situation in which they were required to select a hospital for knee surgery. Eye-tracking was utilized as the participants were presented with statistical data for each hospital. After choosing a hospital, each participant was interviewed using a retrospective think- aloud protocol to understand his or her decision making process. The results indicate that there is a standard, underlying decision making process for all consumers. The steps of this process directly relate to known data interpretation trends which mark potential areas of improvement: consumers focus most on information presented first, they visually concentrate most on the differences presented in information, and extensive amounts of information lead to mental strain and a loss of thoroughness in decision-making. The primary limitation of this study is the small number of participants with limited demographic information. The insights gained from this study can be applied to improve healthcare reporting in the future.