Behavioral economic studies help to understand human behavior by analyzing the effects of psychological insights such as cognitive, cultural, emotional, and social factors on economic decision-making among individuals and organizations. Ideally, human beings are expected to make a decision based on logic, knowledge, and calculated risks and benefits. However, this is not always the case because people tend to use emotions, identity, and the environment to make many decisions. Sometimes, the decisions depend on how the options and possible consequences are presented. In healthcare systems and institutions, leaders are expected to make decisions that improve treatment and patient care outcomes. The leaders can improve their decision-making by using behavioral economics knowledge.
Health care provision has two main players; the patients and care providers who include physicians, nurses, and pharmacists, among others. Care providers and patients work together to improve the patients’ health by treating presenting illnesses and ensuring a full recovery. Many times, the primary goal of care is not achieved due to some behavioral limiting factors such as patients failing to take medications, failure to adhere to healthy lifestyle guidelines, and care providers failing to provide evidence-based care (Bickel, Moody, & Higgins, 2016). The two parties work based on the existing regulations and policies made by the leaders. Therefore, leaders can use behavioral economics to influence the behaviors of the patients and healthcare workers for better decisions and results.
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Influencing Patients’ Decisions
There are various scenarios in which patients fail to make the best care decisions and contribute to poor treatment outcomes. For example, many patients, after being discharged, fail to take medications as prescribed. Some take them irregularly, while others feel that they have gotten better and discard the drugs (Hallsworth et al., 2016). In other instances, patients with lifestyle diseases such as obesity and heart disease fail to adhere to healthy living guidelines such as quitting smoking and having regular exercise. In the end, these decisions by the patients lead to poor health outcomes.
Healthcare leaders can intervene by using behavioral economics to make the patients make better decisions. Generally, people like to receive gifts and rewards. In this case, having a care plan in which the patients get some rewards, which can be monetary, will make many patients regularly take medications, and others adhere to the exercise and dietary programs (Bickel et al., 2016). Besides the reward system, leaders can use deposit programs to influence patient decisions more. One would feel bad to miss out on a reward. However, the feeling would be worse if the person loses money (Khullar, 2017). So if the patients have some money deposited in their accounts, which they lose any time they miss on their medications or fail to go to an exercise session, they would adhere more to the programs.
Influencing Health Care Providers’ Decisions
Physicians and nurses have sufficient knowledge and ability to provide high-quality care through required behaviors. However, they still fail to behave as required in several instances. For example, evidence-based care is the best mode of practice and has been implemented by almost all healthcare organizations, but many care providers ignore it (Hallsworth et al., 2016). Hospital-Acquired Infections (HAI) are partly caused by healthcare workers failure to adhere to simple practice guidelines such as handwashing. HAI is a current healthcare concern, showing how ignoring the guidelines can be problematic.
By using behavioral economics, healthcare leaders can influence the decisions of care providers. The nurses and physicians have their performance rewarded by the organization to make them aim to achieve better and get the rewards. An example is a pay-for-performance system introduced by the Obama administration through the Accountable Care Organizations. Organizations can also encourage the implementation of EBP by rewarding their workers who implement it effectively (Khullar, 2017). By influencing the decisions of healthcare personnel and patients, the leaders will have succeeded in using behavioral economics to improve patient care.
References
Bickel, W. K., Moody, L., & Higgins, S. T. (2016). Some current dimensions of the behavioral economics of health-related behavior change. Preventive medicine , 92 , 16-23.
Hallsworth, M., Snijders, V., Burd, H., Prestt, J., Judah, G., Huf, S., & Halpern, D. (2016). Applying behavioral insights: Simple ways to improve health outcomes. World Innovation Summit for Health .
Khullar, D. (2017). How behavioral economics can produce better health care. New York Times .
