Learning Workshop #2
This learning report summarizes Workshop #2 of the Uncovering the True Cost of Healthcare series, which focused on how time costs—the time patients and caregivers spend getting care, navigating the healthcare system, and self-advocating—create significant economic and quality-of-life impacts. Convened by the Center for Innovation & Value Research in November 2024, the workshop brought together patients, caregivers, researchers, and funders to explore how time costs accumulate, vary across individuals, and compound into long-term ripple effects such as lost income, delayed care, burnout, and social isolation. Grounded in lived-experience narratives, participants emphasized that healthcare systems routinely undervalue patient and caregiver time and that research typically measures time only in minutes rather than considering its quality, tradeoffs, and downstream consequences. The report calls for patient-partnered mixed-methods research to make time costs visible, account for equity differences, and integrate time effects into economic analyses so value assessment reflects the true burden of care on patients and families.
