Controlling for race/ethnicity: a comparison of California commercial health plans CAHPS scores to NCBD benchmarks

International Journal for Equity in Health

Research

John Zweifler¹  Rebeca A Lopez¹  Susan Hughes¹ 

[1] Department of Family and Community Medicine, Fresno Medical Education Program, University of California, San Francisco, 155 North Fresno Street, Fresno, CA, USA;

关键词: Health Plan;    Member Experience;    Consumer Assessment;    Personal Doctor;    Doctor Communication;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-9276-9-4

 received in 2009-02-25, accepted in 2010-01-25,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundBecause California has higher managed care penetration and the race/ethnicity of Californians differs from the rest of the United States, we tested the hypothesis that California's lower health plan Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS®) survey results are attributable to the state's racial/ethnic composition.MethodsCalifornia CAHPS survey responses for commercial health plans were compared to national responses for five selected measures: three global ratings of doctor, health plan and health care, and two composite scores regarding doctor communication and staff courtesy, respect, and helpfulness. We used the 2005 National CAHPS 3.0 Benchmarking Database to assess patient experiences of care. Multiple stepwise logistic regression was used to see if patient experience ratings based on CAHPS responses in California commercial health plans differed from all other states combined.ResultsCAHPS patient experience responses in California were not significantly different than the rest of the nation after adjusting for age, general health rating, individual health plan, education, time in health plan, race/ethnicity, and gender. Both California and national patient experience scores varied by race/ethnicity. In both California and the rest of the nation Blacks tended to be more satisfied, while Asians were less satisfied.ConclusionsCalifornia commercial health plan enrollees rate their experiences of care similarly to enrollees in the rest of the nation when seven different variables including race/ethnicity are considered. These findings support accounting for more than just age, gender and general health rating before comparing health plans from one state to another. Reporting on race/ethnicity disparities in member experiences of care could raise awareness and increase accountability for reducing these racial and ethnic disparities.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Zweifler et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.