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Nationwide Consumer Survey of Medicaid Providers and Systems

PYGK62 African-American doctor checks patient's heart and lungs with stethoscope during routine medical examination.
A first-of-its-kind survey of adults enrolled in Medicaid
  • Client
    Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
  • Dates
    2014 - 2015

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

“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.”

Senior Vice President

“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.”

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