Educating Healthcare Consumers as an Indirect Measure for Educating Physicians

I recently returned from the Lab Institute conference sponsored by the Washington G-2 Reports and the American Pathology Foundation. One of the issues that was raised by several different speakers at this conference was how to educate physicians about more effective utilization of lab tests. In many cases, the problem relates to redundant test ordering for hospitalized patients. However, there is also the issue of physicians ordering the "wrong" test. For some, their approach to lab testing harks back to a previous era and previous practices.

The conclusion of many of the speakers was that educating physicians about effective utilization of the lab was expensive, time-consuming, and frustrating. Some observed that perhaps a more effective path would be to educate healthcare consumers about these issues and thereby indirectly educate physicians based on their interactions with their patients. I believe that this is not a far-fetched idea is this era of better educated healthcare consumers and wide access to high quality information on the web.

I have blogged on a number of previous occasions about the so-called Health 2.0 movement whereby healthcare consumers can learn about health issues on the web. The web also has the capability of making healthcare issues such as the cost of care more transparent to consumers, accelerating their learning curve. So now I need to ask the following question: Is the idea of educating physicians about lab matters through consumer education a naive and possibly destructive idea?

Here's my answer to this question. Fist of all, let's discard the use of the phrase educating physicians in this context. It's unnecessarily provocative and I am ashamed that I even used it in the caption for this note. Let's evaluate the following proposition instead. The country's allocation of resources toward healthcare is now approaching 20% of the GDP. Healthcare decisions are also critical for the welfare of individuals and their families. In such an environment, it's important that healthcare consumers participate in a dialogue with their healthcare providers about the choice and value of lab testing for them and their families. Lab professionals should seek to facilitate such discussions. This advice is particularly on target given that one of the conclusions of a recent article (see: Unnecessary Lab Tests) was that patients often put pressure on their physicians to order unnecessary lab tests.