Outreach & Education Committee

Outreach & Education Committee

Consumer Empowerment- Outreach and Education Committee
The LHCQF recognizes that many improvements in quality and efficiency ultimately occur during the consumer-provider or consumer-health plan transaction. It is critical that consumers be provided with information that not only improves decision making at the point of care, but also when choosing a provider or health plan and when engaging in self-care and lifestyle choices which have an impact on their health.

The Outreach and Education Committee, has identified two initial areas of consumer focus:

Improving consumer health and health care literacy and numeracy;
Identifying and publishing high quality sources of consumer information and promoting improvements in the presentation of this information to consumers;

Louisiana’s overall illiteracy rate is among the worst in the nation. According to health literacy researcher Terry Davis, PhD at Louisiana State University-Shreveport, patients with low literacy skills demonstrated a lower rate of correct interpretation of the eight most commonly used prescription drug warning labels than did those with higher literacy skills. The National Health Literacy Assessment recently completed by the US Department of Education found that 1/3 of all consumers surveyed nationally could not correctly determine how often to take medication from instruction on the bottle, and 85% could not calculate their share of an employee health plan from a table. This has serious implications for the implementation of all efforts determined to improve consumer decision-making.

The LHCQF will work with its stakeholder partners to launch evidenced based education and outreach programs to improve health and health care literacy in Louisiana. These programs will range from group presentations to consumer decision-making guides to mass media campaigns focused on specific health topics.

The LHCQF will simultaneously work with existing local and national web-based public reporting efforts such as www.hosptialcompare.hhs.gov, Louisiana BCBS HealthFacts, and the Louisiana Hospital Association to present their comparative quality and price information in manner, which has demonstrable positive impact on consumer decision-making.

The committee continues to engage stakeholders and the community at large in the work of the LHCQF in order to provide a feedback channel into the LHCQF to understand stakeholder perceptions and problems with the work of the LHCQF and to identify new opportunities for collaboration, funding and quality improvement.

Please click here to review and comment on Outreach and Education Committee draft recommendations

Please click here to view Committee Reference Documents

NEW Outreach & Education 2008-2009 Strategic Plan