Change Healthcare – Harris Poll Research: Half of Consumers Avoid Seeking Care Because It’s Too Hard

Finding, accessing, and paying for healthcare in America requires so much work that half of consumers surveyed by The Harris Poll have avoided seeking care. More than two-thirds of consumers said every step of the healthcare process is a chore, most said they don’t know how much a treatment or visit costs until months later, and nearly all said they want shopping for healthcare to be as easy as shopping for other common services—including making it a fully connected digital experience.

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Change Healthcare – Harris Poll survey finds 2/3 of consumers said the effort required to find, access, and pay for care is excessive and a burden

These findings and more are detailed in the 2020 Change Healthcare – Harris Poll Consumer Experience Index, a national study of 1,945 consumers conducted by The Harris Poll and commissioned by Change Healthcare. Researchers asked consumers to rate the ease or difficulty required to find, access, and pay for care across 29 tasks, using an index of 1 to 200, with 200 being the “hardest” effort, 1 being “effortless,” and anything above 100 being “difficult.” The result: Not one healthcare activity was described by consumers as effortless. Rather, consumers ranked the difficulty of dealing with the healthcare system as high as 149, and the average across all tasks at 117.

“When half of consumers say they’re avoiding care because the system is too hard to deal with, it has become clear that the effort required to find, access, and pay for care is a social determinant of health,” says William Krause, vice president of Connected Consumer Health™ at Change Healthcare. “Consumers want health plans and providers to end the fragmentation, simplify the experience, and deliver a fully connected encounter that makes healthcare as seamless as any other digital endeavor—whether that’s shopping for goods, booking a trip, or paying bills. Payers and providers that streamline healthcare for patients and members will gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.”

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