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Discriminating Customers, Responsible Patients, Empowered Users: Consumerism and the Modernisation of Health Care

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2006

JANET NEWMAN
Affiliation:
Department of Social Policy, Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA email: j.e.newman@open.ac.uk
ELIZABETH VIDLER
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, Faculty of Social Science, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA email: e.vidler@open.ac.uk

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.

Type
Article
Copyright
2006 Cambridge University Press

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