In September, Healthy Memphis Common Table and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation held an event called, "Care About Your Care."

It featured a webinar with national health care experts, one of whom was television host Dr. Oz. After the webinar, we held an open discussion with about 100 people to address how health care consumers can take steps to become an empowered patient. The audience included consumers, health care providers, insurance providers and others.

The discussion yielded some wonderful dialogue. We learned that many patients want a better relationship with their health care providers. They want to be able to ask questions about the research they did themselves, without the fear of offending their health care providers. They want open, honest answers to questions that will allow them to make educated decisions regarding their health care. In short, they want to be empowered patients.

Health care consumers now have more access to information than ever before, but they still need quality health care providers to assist them in understanding their health issues, making educated decisions and providing quality care. In some cases, they may be receiving too much information. Consumers are often bombarded by advice from doctors, friends, family, the internet and drug companies. They probably hear more stories about what went wrong during someone's treatment than they do about what went right. Horror stories of medical errors, misdiagnosis and inexperienced medical staffers are hurled at them regularly, so many would prefer to proceed with caution. Those of us in the medical profession know that many of those stories represent individual events, but we also know that health care inequity is a huge concern. This has prompted many consumers to do their part to make sure they receive the best care possible. Then, there are other factors, such as cost. The rising cost of health care and medications as well as new health care reforms have consumers asking more questions to make sure that visits, tests and medications are covered by their insurance to reduce out-of pocket expenses.

The abundance of information available can be a lot for someone who is not a trained medical professional to digest, but it's their body so consumers should want to be informed, right? The best way to combat fear and uncertainty is education.

The empowered patient can actually make your job as a health care provider easier. The Healthy Memphis Common Table website now provides a Care About Your Care resource entitled," 9 Things You Can Do to Get Better Care." It includes simple tasks consumers can do to become an empowered patient. Being empowered doesn't merely mean asking questions and visiting public reporting websites. It also means talking to their health care providers and developing a good relationship. It means keeping a current list of medications and taking them to every visit and allowing one doctor or nurse to coordinate their care to reduce confusion, repetitive tests and multiple diagnoses.

You can help patients become empowered the right way. You can help them cut through the confusion and misinformation. Consumers are being asked to Care About Their Care and health care providers are being asked to welcome them to do so.

Presented in partnership by the Healthy Memphis Common Table and Memphis Medical News

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