Applying the concept of consumer confusion to healthcare: development and validation of a patient confusion model.

As patient autonomy and consumer sovereignty increase, information provision is considered essential to decrease information asymmetries between healthcare service providers and patients. However, greater availability of third party information sources can have negative side effects. Patients can be confused by the nature, as well as the amount, of quality information when making choices among competing health care providers.

The patient perspective of clinical training-an empirical study about patient motives to participate.

This study introduces a comprehensive model to explain patients' prosocial behavioral intentions to participate in clinical training. Using the helping decision model, the authors analyze the combined impact of factors that affect participation intentions. The model includes intrapersonal and interpersonal appraisals triggered by an awareness of the societal need for clinical training as a practical part of medical education.

Are religiously affiliated hospitals more than just nonprofits? A study on stereotypical patient perceptions and preferences.

Recent research on patients' perceptions of different hospitals predominantly concentrates on whether hospitals are nonprofit or for-profit. Nonprofit hospitals can be subdivided into hospitals that are affiliated with a religious denomination and those that are not. Referring to the stereotypic content model, this study analyzes patients' perceptions of religious hospitals based on the factors of warmth, competence, trustworthiness and Christianity.

How patients choose hospitals: using the stereotypic content model to model trustworthiness, warmth and competence.

In many countries, policy initiatives force the implementation of demand-driven healthcare systems to encourage competition among providers. When actively choosing hospitals, consumers can compare data on the quality of hospital performance among providers. However, patients do not necessarily take full advantage of comparative quality information but instead use a number of readily available proxies to evaluate provider trustworthiness.

Who chooses, who uses, who rates: the impact of agency on electronic word-of-mouth about hospitals stays.

Background: Patients' agents rather than patients themselves often choose hospitals and rehabilitation centers and evaluate inpatient stays. Thus, online reviews of a hospital may reflect a service experience the patient is not responsible for in two ways. First, a patient may evaluate a hospital that a physician as agent has selected, although he still received the service and is qualified to evaluate it.

The relevance of unrelated costs internal and external to the healthcare sector to the outcome of a cost-comparison analysis of secondary prevention: the case of general colorectal cancer screening in the German population.

The potential of secondary prevention measures, such as cancer screening, to produce cost savings in the healthcare sector is a controversial issue in healthcare economics. Potential savings are calculated by comparing treatment costs with the cost of a prevention program. When survivors' subsequent unrelated health care costs are included in the calculation, however, the overall cost of disease prevention rises.