Beneficiary Survey-Based Feedback on New Medicare Informational Materials

Health Care Financing Review, Fall, 2001 by Lauren McCormack, A., Steven Garfinkel, A., Judith Hibbard, H., Kerry Kilpatrick, E., William D. Kalsbeek

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to thank Sherry Terrell, Chuck Darby, and Christine Crofton for their ongoing support and assistance with this study, and May Kuo, Vincent Iannicchione, and Larry Campbell for providing statistical and programming expertise. We would also like to acknowledge the contributions of Edward Norton and Ute Bayen for their guidance on the project and Jim Lubalin and Shoshanna Sofaer and Lauren Harris-Kojetin for reviewing an earlier version of the paper.

(1) For more information about the CAHPS[R] project, refer to Carman et al., 1999.

(2) For both new and experienced beneficiaries, those who were excluded because they did not receive any information in the last 6 months were more likely to be female, have lower education and income. For experienced beneficiaries only, those who were excluded were more likely to be unmarried, live alone, and have individually purchased supplemental insurance.

(3) Those who did not receive information were placed in the not useful category of the dependent variable when these individuals were included in the models.

REFERENCES

Brown, H., Prisuta, R., Jacobs, B., and Campbell, A.: Literacy of Older Adults in America: Results from the National Adult Literacy Survey, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Pub. No. NCES 97-576. U.S. Government Printing Office. Washington, DC. 2000.

Carmen, K., Short, P.F., Farley, D., et al.: Epilogue: Early Lessons from CAHPS[R] Demonstrations and Evaluations. Medical Care 37(3):MS97-MS105, 1999.

Goldstein, E.: Assessment of the National Medicare Education Program: Supply and Demand Information. Health Care Financing Review 21(1): 129-131, 1999.

Harris-Kojetin, L.D., McCormack, L.A., Jael, E.F., and Lissy, K.: Beneficiaries' Perceptions of New Medicare Health Plan Choice Print Materials. Health Care Financing Review 23 (1)21-35, Fall 2001.

Hibbard, J.H., Slovic, P., Peters, E., et al.: Is the Informed Choice Policy Approach Appropriate for Medicare Beneficiaries? Health Affairs 20(3):199-203, 2001.

McCormack, L.A., Garfinkel, S.A., Hibbard, J.H., et al.: Health Plan Decision-Making with New Medicare Information Materials. Health Services Research 36(3):531-554, 2001.

McCormack, L.A., Garfinkel, S.A., Hibbard, J.H., et al.: Health Insurance Knowledge Among Medicare Beneficiaries. Health Services Research. (Forthcoming, 2002.)

McCormack, L.A., Schnaier, J., Lee, A., and Garfinkel, S.A.: Medicare Beneficiary Counseling Programs: What Are They and Do They Work? Health Care Financing Review 18(1):127-140, 1996.

Reprint Requests: Lauren A. McCormack, Ph.D., Research Triangle Institute, Inc., 3040 Cornwallis Road, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2194. E-mail: lmac@rti.org

Lauren A. McCormack is with Research Triangle Institute, Inc. (RTI). Steven A. Garfinkel is with the American Institutes for Research. Judith H. Hibbard is with the University of Oregon. Kerry E. Kilpatrick and William D. Kalsbeek are with the Unversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Research for this article was supported through Intra-Agency Agreement Number IA98-48 between CMS and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality as part of Cooperative Agreement Number U18HS09218. Funding for this research was also received through a Professional Development Award from RTI. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of RTI, American Institutes for Research, University of Oregon, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, or CMS.