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Show • Overall, between 11% and 12% of all enrollees surveyed indicated having experienced some problem with delay in getting care while waiting for approval of some difficulty in receiving medical care that their physician thought was necessary. Medicaid enrollees reported experiencing these problems at a significantly greater rate. (1.5 percentage points difference) • Almost four out of five of the enrollees interviewed reported that they had to wait on average more than an hour for the providers to return their calls for medical information or advice. Of Medicaid clients, 29% compared to 19% of non-Medicaid, reported the waiting time at less than one hour. About 13% of Medicaid beneficiaries and 16% of commercial enrollees reported having to wait at least a full day. • Of Medicaid enrollees, 39% compared to 32% of non-Medicaid clients, reported waiting less than 15 minutes at the provider's office. Most Medicaid clients reported a waiting time of less than 30 minutes at the provider's office. • Although more than 70% of both Medicaid and non-Medicaid enrollees reported being "very" or "completely" satisfied with their health plan, Medicaid clients reported a higher level of satisfaction. • One in three Medicaid enrollees reported overall quality of medical care as "excellent". One in four commercial enrollees reported the same rating. • Of Medicaid enrollees, 64% would definitely recommend their current health plan to friends and family members, whereas 48% of commercially-insured clients would definitely recommend their health plan. • Approximately 9% of Medicaid clients "probably" or "definitely" intend to switch plans next time possible, while 10.2% of commercially-insured enrollees said they would switch plans. These percentages exclude those who cited reasons that are not related to perceived problems with the HMO. • About 10% of commercial enrollees reported a decline in the overall performance of their health plan, compared to about 5% for the Medicaid enrollees. Of Medicaid clients, 23% reported their health plan got better during the last twelve months, whereas 14.2% of commercially-insured clients reported an increase in their health plan's performance. Moreover, 14.4% of Medicaid enrollees, compared to 4.1% of commercially-insured members, said their health plan got much better. Dissemination of Results The Health Data Committee plans to produce three reports from the survey during the first half of 1997. The first report will include overall analysis of the survey results by socio-demographic characteristics, health status, length of enrollment and health care utilization. The analysis will focus on a comparison between the Medicaid and non-Medicaid enrollees. The second report will be a technical documentation, including sampling design, quality of the data, and methods applied to determine statistical significance of results. The third report will be a consumer brochure with health-plan level survey results. In addition to these three reports, the Committee has prepared an informational brochure to educate the public about managed health care in order to have a better understanding of the consumer satisfaction results. The members of the reporting subcommittee have reached consensus in principle that the enrollee-level survey results will be provided to the participating HMOs for internal use. Specific details of this arrangement - contents and format of the data file and guidelines for use and dissemination -are still being discussed as of this writing. No decision has been made regarding public availability of the enrollee-level survey results. The Future: Phase III The planning for Phase III of the consumer satisfaction component of the report cards project is already underway. The survey, scheduled to begin in June of 1997, will expand coverage to all twelve HMO plans - four Medicaid and eight non-Medicaid. Some revisions in the sampling procedure, questionnaire, and choice of respondent are expected based on the experiences from the previous survey. DataStat recommends that the Utah's Health: An Annual Review 1996 19 |