Consumerism and the Distributed Delivery of Health Care

This stream of Professor Huckman's work examines the growing tendency for health care to be delivered in a more distributed manner. Examples of this phenomenon include health IT, teleradiology, medical travel, remote monitoring of chronic medical conditions, and retail clinics.  This “de-localization” has been facilitated by rapid advances in healthcare information technology (HIT) and by the parallel trend of increased consumer involvement in medical decisionmaking and care provision.  Traditionally, consumers have delegated a significant portion of medical decisionmaking to the physicians who serve as their agents. With greater cost sharing and transparency about the quality of care, however, consumers have begun to play a larger role in both medical decisionmaking and actual care delivery. This shift has created both opportunities and challenges for patients, health care providers, policymakers, insurers, and employers.