Comments on: Dr. Frist Adam Bosworth and me all at an airport http://company.changehealthcare.com/dr-frist-adam-bosworth-and-me-all-at-an-airport/ Behind the Scenes at change:healthcare Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:02:20 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: NEJM begins to validate change:healthcare direction | change:healthcare http://company.changehealthcare.com/dr-frist-adam-bosworth-and-me-all-at-an-airport/comment-page-1/#comment-93 NEJM begins to validate change:healthcare direction | change:healthcare Sat, 01 Dec 2007 04:29:30 +0000 http://www.changehealthcare.com/blog/130/#comment-93 [...] to use the term “validate” but it is nice to have the New England Journal of Medicine validate my notion of social influence as noted below in today’s post: An interesting and somewhat shocking study published in The [...] [...] to use the term “validate” but it is nice to have the New England Journal of Medicine validate my notion of social influence as noted below in today’s post: An interesting and somewhat shocking study published in The [...]

]]> By: Scott Kozicki http://company.changehealthcare.com/dr-frist-adam-bosworth-and-me-all-at-an-airport/comment-page-1/#comment-92 Scott Kozicki Sat, 01 Dec 2007 04:13:05 +0000 http://www.changehealthcare.com/blog/130/#comment-92 You're correct. Behavior change is hard and most people won't attempt it unless severely motivated. Oddly enough though, when you're talking about health and healthy behavior, there's lots of research that shows that tangible improvements become the motivation. You need something to break the inertia initially (ie. money, in our model) but once most people start to see the real change in their health, that takes over and keeps them engaged. That's the point where I think communication and peer support becomes crucial. To keep people from regressing into bad habits. Ironically, I think people spend more time/energy/tools researching buying a car or a stock than they ever do in procuring health care services which have a far greater impact on their lives. Some of this is because the tools don't exist in as mature a form as say, Morningstar. But a lot of that is because most people don't think of health care in the same way as other services. Hopefully, that will cease in the very near future en masse. You’re correct. Behavior change is hard and most people won’t attempt it unless severely motivated. Oddly enough though, when you’re talking about health and healthy behavior, there’s lots of research that shows that tangible improvements become the motivation. You need something to break the inertia initially (ie. money, in our model) but once most people start to see the real change in their health, that takes over and keeps them engaged. That’s the point where I think communication and peer support becomes crucial. To keep people from regressing into bad habits.

Ironically, I think people spend more time/energy/tools researching buying a car or a stock than they ever do in procuring health care services which have a far greater impact on their lives. Some of this is because the tools don’t exist in as mature a form as say, Morningstar. But a lot of that is because most people don’t think of health care in the same way as other services. Hopefully, that will cease in the very near future en masse.

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