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Why do you think your paper is
highly cited?
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“Our methodology has been useful in developing new surveys, such as the CAHPS survey for hospital patients.”
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Performance measures for health care, particularly those based on
reports from consumers of care, are generating tremendous amounts of
data and are being relied on for directing and incentivizing quality
improvement. Our paper provides a conceptual "map" of the
aspects of quality measured by health plan member surveys, and thus
provides a basis for interpreting this information that is useful in
further research.
Does it describe a new discovery or a new methodology that's
useful to others?
Our paper helps researchers and health care managers who use
consumer survey data to better understand the underlying dimensions
of quality that are being reported by the survey respondents. Our
methodology has been useful in developing new surveys, such as the *Consumer
Assessments of Health Plans Study (CAHPS) survey for hospital
patients.
Could you summarize the significance of your paper in layman's
terms?
We found that when health plan members answer more than 30
questions about their experiences with health care and their health
plans, the information can be well summarized by four measures:
interactions with doctors and the doctor's office, the plan’s
customer service, access to special medical services provided by the
plan, and advice on behavior that improves health.
How did you become involved in this research and were there
successes or failures?
Our research group at Harvard Medical School is the analytical
component of a multi-institution team that conducts the CAHPS survey
for Medicare managed-care plans. We originally began this research
as part of an attempt to identify plans of unusually high and low
quality, summarizing the responses to a number of items. These
measures have been useful for studying the associations of quality
with various plan characteristics, but much yet remains to be done
to determine what makes some plans more successful than others.
What are the social or political implications of your research?
This paper is part of a program of research aimed at improving
the quality of the health care system of the United States. Results
of these surveys are closely watched by plan managers trying to
improve their ratings and by managers at the federal Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is the largest purchaser of
health care in the country.
Alan M. Zaslavsky, Ph.D.
Professor of Health Care Policy (Statistics)
Department of Health Care Policy
Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA, USA
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