Why Healthcare Fails Consumers

Elder Care Consultation

Pamela D. Wilson - Caregiving Expert

Overcoming barriers to health literacy through education can help healthcare consumers understand how to engage and partner with healthcare providers.

GOLDEN, CO, USA, May 13, 2021 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Healthcare consumer understanding of how to get care fails because the healthcare system expects consumers and patients to be interested in health and well-being over competing priorities in life. Most consumers want access to healthcare at a reasonable cost and to be treated with dignity. However, before the need occurs, most consumers don?t understand the benefit of participating in routine or preventative care.

Wilson?s experience as a professional fiduciary, care manager, and elder care consultant confirms that Interactions with healthcare providers can be intimidating for patients because of medical terminology and time constraints. Doctors have limited time to spend with patients at medical appointments.

Patients hesitate to ask questions for fear of being seen as ignorant. Healthcare consumers have difficulty making informed medical care decisions independently without information and access to a trusted physician or person familiar with health care.

Gaps in decision-making, trust in healthcare providers, health literacy, and judgment to evaluate information all contribute to the failure of the United States healthcare system to provide high-quality, managed healthcare at a reasonable cost.

Making Sense of Healthcare for Caregivers and Aging Adults

Preventative actions have a significant effect on health and well-being. When consumers are not informed about, engaged, or interested in fundamental aspects of health and well-being like nutrition, exercise, or self-care, these gaps show up in middle-age or earlier as chronic diseases.

For most consumers, the diagnosis of a chronic disease? like high blood pressure or diabetes?is the first reality check that health can and will change. Inattention to health has resulted in baby boomers receiving care from adult children struggling to establish their own lives. Adults near or past retirement age are caring for elderly parents in their 80?s and beyond.

Many caregivers and older adults face difficulty making sense of healthcare information and experience uncertainty knowing what to do next. Prescriptions written at medical appointments go unfilled. Patients fail to schedule follow-up appointments. These actions result in delayed care, advancing medical conditions, higher healthcare costs, and a need for family members to provide care.

A Lack of Relevance Results in Poor Healthcare Utilization

The actions and decisions of consumers and patients are influenced by healthcare providers and others who present information. A lack of relevance and personal connection contributes to low participation levels and follow-through with medical recommendations that don?t make sense to patients.

Providers can enhance patients' health literacy through honest communication, offering information, explaining options, and helping patients weigh the pros and cons of decisions. Pamela D Wilson's expertise as a care manager helps families evaluate, plan, and manage chronic disease and related care needs through telephone and online virtual consultations.

More than twenty years of experience working with older adults and caregivers allows Wilson to explain complex situations in a manner that caregivers understand. By sharing practical experience and relating information to care concerns, Wilson guides family caregivers and older adults through a process to advocate with the healthcare system to get the care they need to maintain health and enjoy quality of life.

Caregiver Support for Individuals, Corporations, and Groups

Wilson?s mission to reach one million caregivers worldwide is supported by her passion for working with groups and corporations to provide keynote speaking sessions, live or online presentations, webinars, and unique online or on-site education programs. She supports family caregivers and aging adults through her caregiving library, videos, The Caring Generation podcast, and 1:1 telephone or online elder care consultations.

Contact Wilson for more information about caregiver support, resources, and education by emailing Inquiry_For_Pamela@PamelaDWilson.com or calling +1 303-810-1816.

Pamela D. Wilson
Pamela D. Wilson, Inc.
+1 303-810-1816
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