[Today we welcome our first guest post from Jared Johnson, a PR professional in a Texas hospital. He makes some good end-of-the-year predictions about the continued rise of transparency and consumer-driven healthcare]

Guest post by Jared Johnson

2007 is shaping up to be one of those line-in-the-sand years – one that is predicted to demarcate the winners and losers of the consumer-driven health care movement more than ever before. As Exhibit A, I submit PricewaterhouseCoopers' recent report titled The Top Seven Health Industry Trends of '07. In short, PwC predicts 2007 to be a tipping point for state policymaking, pricing transparency, technology upgrades, consumer-directed health plans, drug pricing, obesity awareness and specialized healthcare facilities.

As a hospital administrator, I admit I find myself a bit anxious. I see how this whole consumer-driven health care wave could improve our patients' experiences. I see the potential for my hospital to emerge as a market leader without major strategy shifts. I also see such a drastic disconnect between the health industry and consumers that makes any hope for sustained growth short-lived, at best.

As the father of two young children, I resonate with health care from the consumer perspective as well. Because I am a user of health care first and an administrator second, I cannot ignore the nagging questions about pricing and quality of patient care. I thought I knew my own health plan until a stay in the emergency room took about twice as long and cost about twice as much as I was expecting. It's a funny feeling when you spend your days elevating grievances about your hospital and one day find yourself on the verge of filing one yourself. In times like those, it's crystal clear that calls for transparency are firmly rooted.

A couple of comments from the PwC report point to ways that hospitals can emerge as leaders and consumer advocates in this time of historic industry shifts. One of its key findings is this troubling statistic:

"Nine out of ten Americans (90 percent) believe that greed is a major reason that U.S. healthcare costs are rising, a greater number than those citing drug prices, care for the uninsured, business inefficiencies or malpractice costs."

Sandy Lutz, president of PwC's Health Research Institute, explained it this way:

"There are a myriad of issues facing health organizations and opportunities for executives to address them, but they need to also focus on closing the gap between how consumers view the industry and how the industry views itself."

If we take her recommendation as gospel, that makes every individual healthcare professional a reputation manager and PR specialist. Each of us becomes charged with answering those calls for transparency, for explaining perceived gaps in pricing and patient care. We cannot sweep under the rug an e-mail, a blog or phone call that demands recourse for an unpleasant hospital experience. We are to relinquish our role as gatekeepers and instead put more effort into explaining our business to our consumers. That is one way we can reverse public opinion about our industry, one satisfied patient at a time.

The report further suggests that government, insurers and employers ought to be the ones educating consumers on the benefits of transparency. But what if we, at the hospital level, become the first ones to do it on a national scale? What if we are the ones who drive the amount of transparency data that is made available to the public? Suppose, for instance, that consumers can locate a manageable amount of pricing and quality indicators on a hospital's own Web site rather than wading through a cumbersome third-party site that contains reams of data. Think how a patient's experience can begin days or weeks before he or she sets foot on your campus. It's the entitlement of consumers to more data about our hospitals that is changing our industry.

It appears that consumer-drive health care is here to stay. As it takes hold, transparency will continue to be an issue. We as hospital administrators can adopt the movement and find ourselves at the forefront of consumer demand, or we can fight it tooth and nail. I suspect we'll see some progress a year from now, when we're reading the 2008 industry report.