Ensuring Quality Health Care

Considering the Consumer

Many of the efforts to disseminate the results of performance measurements are designed to help consumers make informed choices about health care providers and plans. In turn, customer input is an important part of measuring quality.

Charles Darby, M.A., from the AHCPR's Center for Quality Measurement and Improvement, provided an overview of the research on consumers' views of quality. He explained that, in general, consumers are not interested in highly technical measures of quality. When considering quality, they think of covered benefits, access to preferred providers, and ease of access to care and costs. Certain subpopulations, like Medicaid patients, have some additional concerns, such as cultural sensitivity.

Consumer satisfaction surveys have been found to be an important sources of information on how consumers feel about their health care providers and plans. AHCPR, through contracts with several research organizations, is sponsoring the Consumer Assessment of Health Plans (CAHPS®) project, which is seeking to develop several survey methods for obtaining information from consumers.

The team developing the CAHPS® survey made an effort to gather important information that consumers are interested in, while keeping the instrument short and at a low literacy level to ensure maximum participant response and comprehension. In addition to a core instrument, they developed a supplementary set of survey items to address the specific needs of special populations.

References

Consumer Assessment of Health Plans (CAHPS®), Agency for Health Care Policy and Research. http://www.cahps.ahrq.gov/

McGee J., Excerpt from Information Interests, Needs, and Concerns of Medicaid Beneficiaries: A Preliminary Report on the Medicaid Consumer Information Project, submitted to the National Committee for Quality Assurance, April 4, 1996.

McGee J., Sofaer S., Kreling B. Findings from Focus Groups Conducted for the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) Medicare and Medicaid Consumer Information Projects, July 1996.

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