Health Services Utilization
Quality of Women's Health Care
Indicators of the quality of health care can provide
important information about the effectiveness, safety, timeliness,
and patient-centeredness of women’s health services.
Indicators used to monitor women’s health care in managed
care plans include the timeliness of prenatal care, receipt of postpartum
checkups after delivery, screening for chlamydia, screening for
cervical cancer, and receipt of mammograms. The accessibility of
perinatal services and chlamydia screening is increasing, while
the rate of cervical cancer screens among women in commercial plans
and mammograms among women in both commercial and Medicaid plans
declined between 2003 and 2004.
Perinatal services-prenatal care and postpartum
checkups-appear to be more accessible in commercial (private) plans
than in public-sector plans financed by Medicaid. The same is true
of cervical cancer screening, which is received at least once every
3 years by nearly 81 percent of commercially-insured women and 64.7
percent of women covered by Medicaid.
Chlamydia screening is the one screening service that is more common
among Medicaid-enrolled women than those with private coverage:
49 percent of Medicaid-enrolled women aged 21-25 had a chlamydia
screen in the previous year, compared to 31.7 percent of commercially-insured
women.
In 2004, the rate of mammograms for women aged
52-69 was approximately equal for women with private coverage and
those covered through Medicare. However, Medicaid-enrolled women
are considerably less likely to receive a mammogram at least once
every 2 years.
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LINE CHART: HEDIS Measures of Perinatal Care, by
Payer, 2000-04
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LINE CHART: HEDIS Rates of Cervical Cancer and
Chlamydia Screening by Payer, 2000-04
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LINE CHART: HEDIS Rates of Mammograms, by Payer,
2000-04
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