Nationwide Consumer Survey of Medicaid Providers and Systems
Problem
Medicaid lacked state-by-state data on patient experience.
Though Medicaid is a federal program, it is administered independently by each state plus the District of Columbia. That means services—and health outcomes—vary depending on where an enrollee lives. It also meant there were no data from all 51 programs to show how patients were treated differently across the country and how that different treatment affected their well-being. Without these comparisons, states often could only guess how well their Medicaid programs provided care to low-income and disabled residents and where those programs most needed improvement.
Solution
NORC conducted a comprehensive survey of Medicaid-insured adults in almost every state.
To find out how Medicaid enrollees experienced care, NORC at the University of Chicago created the Nationwide Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey for Adults Enrolled in Medicaid. We started by getting anonymized information on 1.5 million Medicaid-insured adults. That enabled us to construct representative samples of four patient archetypes that we could survey to measure their satisfaction and experiences with an array of health care services.
In all, 46 states and the District of Columbia we contacted participants by mail and follow-up phone calls. We also built an easily searchable database of findings that state Medicaid staff could query to compare findings to others.
Result
States received consumer insights pointing to ways to improve service.
Our survey findings allowed Medicaid administrators and their advisers to, for the first time, identify shortcomings in providing health care services compared to other states. This information ranged from the ease of making appointments to experience with out-of-pocket costs.
Related Tags
Project Leads
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Michelle Strollo
Senior Vice PresidentCo-Project Director -
Stephen Smith
Senior Vice PresidentCo-Project Director -
Felicia LeClere
Distinguished Senior FellowCo-Project Director -
Michael Latterner
Senior Data ScientistAssociate Project Director -
Edward Mulrow
Senior Vice President & DirectorSampling Task Leader -
Laurie Imhof
Principal Research DirectorProject Manager -
Jennifer Titus
Principal Research DirectorSenior Staff
Data & Findings
Resources
“Timely collection and dissemination of these data hold the potential to drive improvement in delivery of care and outcomes for the nation’s Medicaid enrollees.”
