Geographical, Organizational, and Individual Variations in Consumer Assessments of Healthcare Quality in Medicare
Presented April 2, 2009 by Alan Zaslavsky, Ph.D.
Professor of Health Care Policy (Statistics)
Department of Health Care Policy
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Abstract
Data from the Consumer Assessments of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS(R)) surveys provide insight into healthcare quality as seen from the perspective of the patient's experiences with care. With about two million completed surveys over the past 10 years, the Medicare CAHPS surveys can be analyzed to assess sources of variation in beneficiary experiences.
This talk summarized findings about:
(1) identifying conceptual domains of experiences through multilevel factor analysis,
(2) relative contributions of geographical and organizational factors to various experiences with care,
(3) geographical associations between experiences in Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare, (4) associations of CAHPS-assessed quality with local utilization patterns.
These findings may contribute to choosing directions for reform of Medicare. A methodological theme is the utility of hierarchical (multilevel) models as a tool for summarizing data across multiple units and outcomes.
Dr. Zaslavsky’s statistical research interests include surveys, census methodology, small area estimation, official statistics, missing data, hierarchical modeling, and Bayesian methodology. His research topics in health care policy center on measurement of the quality of care provided by health plans through consumer assessments and clinical and administrative data. Among his current major projects are (1) the core development project of the Consumer Assessments of Health Plans Study(CAHPS), (2) the CAHPS implementation for Medicare managed care, (3) methodological research on surveys in psychiatric epidemiology, centered on validation of the CIDI-A (adolescent) survey in the National Comorbidity Study-Adolescent, and (4) studies of determinants of quality of care for cancer.
Last modified on Monday Jul 02, 2007