INBW24: Are Patients Consumers?

Are patients consumers? Defining the terms patient and consumer will get us started here and also provide the insight and common understanding that we need to tackle this seemingly elusive question.

Patient (adjective): able to accept or tolerate delays, problems, or suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious. Synonyms: forbearing, uncomplaining, tolerant, long-suffering, resigned, and stoical. Definition two (noun): a person receiving or registered to receive medical treatment.

I’ll get to the number one adjective definition of patient soon enough—don’t you worry—but to start, let’s consider number two (noun) for about T minus 5 seconds. You’ll notice “a person receiving or registered to receive medical treatment” could mean pretty much any adult or child human with an appointment at any health care facility.

Moving on. Consumer (noun): a person who purchases goods and services for personal use; a person or thing that eats or uses something.

Similar to the term patient, a consumer could be anyone anywhere at any time who purchases anything or uses anything. The definition doesn’t separate informed consumers from ill-informed consumers and then postulate that ill-informed consumers are actually not consumers, and I can see why: This path would get dark really fast.

If we’re looking at the literal answer here and I wanted to be obtuse, I could correctly say that the literal answer to the question, “Are patients consumers?” is yes. Consumers are people who use something, and they pay for something. Patients use health care and sometimes they pay for it, so literally patients are consumers as per Webster’s dictionary definitions. But let’s look at the not-literal answer.

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When not hosting the show, Stacey is co-president of Aventria Health Group, a marketing agency and consultancy. Aventria specializes in helping pharmaceutical, employer, pharmacy, and health system clients improve patient outcomes by creating and leveraging collaborations with other health care organizations. For more than 20 years, Stacey has innovated better-coordinated health solutions benefiting all stakeholders and, most of all, the patient.

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