%0 Journal Article
%T Unequal Consumers: Consumerist healthcare technologies and their creation of new inequalities
%A Allard C.R. van Riel
%A Inge L. Bleijenbergh
%A Laura M. Visser
%A Yvonne W.M. Benschop
%J Organization Studies
%@ 1741-3044
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0170840618772599
%X This article examines how consumerist technology creates new inequalities among patients in healthcare. More specifically, we analyse a communication technology that presents a case of consumerization of patients. Using critical diversity literature, we theorize how consumerism embedded in technology assumes a ¡®universal individual¡¯, creating a tension for healthcare professionals between acknowledging differences among patients while aiming for equal treatment of all patients. Based on our empirical analysis of so-called personal online health communities, we explore, at the micro level, how healthcare professionals deal with this tension. We identify four different practices: lacking awareness of differences, downplaying differences, discomfort around acknowledging differences and actively accommodating differences. We theorize how they ultimately all create new inequalities
%K consumerism
%K healthcare
%K inequality
%K technology
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0170840618772599