Discriminating customers, responsible patients, empowered users: consumerism and the modernisation of health care

Newman, Janet and Vidler, Elizabeth (2006). Discriminating customers, responsible patients, empowered users: consumerism and the modernisation of health care. Journal of Social Policy, 35(2) pp. 193–209.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047279405009487

URL: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayIssue?...

Abstract

The centrality of patient choice in the recent political rhetoric of both New Labour and the Conservative Party has prompted a renewed interest in the shift towards a more consumerist conception of health care in the UK. Accordingly, this article reports on early findings from a project in the ESRC/AHRB Cultures of Consumption Programme, exploring how the 'consumer' is constituted in narratives of health reform, and the ways in which policy documents present a particular image of the consumer as a rationale for institutional and cultural change. The article then goes on to look at the ways in which service delivery organisations have responded to New Labour's consumerist imperative. Drawing upon a series of interviews with senior health care managers in two case study locations, the article highlights ways in which choice, responsibility and empowerment have become critical points at which a consumerist orientation is articulated with established professional cultures, and how health organisations have experienced – and attempted to resolve – the tensions that result.