Care starts at home: emotional state and appeals to altruism may reduce demand for overused health services in the UK

Background Overuse of unnecessary services, screening tests, and treatments is an ongoing problem for national health care systems. Overuse is at least partly driven by patient demand.

Purpose This study examined whether altering patients’ emotional state and appealing to patient altruism would reduce demand for three commonly overused UK health services.

Methods In an online experiment, 1,267 UK volunteers were randomized to anxiety, compassion, or neutral conditions before viewing three overuse vignettes. In each vignette, use of the health service was recommended against by the doctor and participants were further randomized to one of three altruism frames, emphasizing the impact of overuse on the self, the self and others locally, or the self and others nationally. Participants rated the likelihood that they would pursue the health service and, assuming that they did not, how long they would be willing-to-wait for it.

Results Altruism frame had a small effect on intentions to use the health service. Those in the local or national (vs. self) frame were 4.7 and 6.1 percentage points, respectively, less likely to ask for the service. Emotion induction had no direct effect on outcomes. However, self-reporting higher levels of anxiety or compassion post-induction was associated with a small, greater likelihood in intentions to ask for the health service or willingness-to-wait, respectively. No interactions between frame and emotion were observed.

Conclusions As a low-cost initiative, emphasizing the benefits to the self and local or national communities could be embedded in appeals designed to appropriately reduce health care overuse in the UK.