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Choosing a health plan: what information will consumers use?
A Tumlinson1, H Bottigheimer, P Mahoney
1Center for Health and Long-Term Care Research, LifePlans, Inc., Waltham, MA, USA.
Health Affairs (Project Hope)
|May 1, 1997
Summary
Employees prioritize cost and benefit information over standardized plan performance data when choosing health insurance. This suggests current quality measures may not align with consumer preferences for health plan selection.
Area of Science:
- Health Services Research
- Health Economics
- Consumer Behavior
Background:
- Employers and policymakers seek to enhance health plan competition to reduce costs and improve quality.
- Standardized quality measures are proposed to supplement traditional cost and benefit data for employee health plan choices.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine employee interest in standardized health plan performance measures.
- To understand how employees weigh performance information against cost and benefit data.
Main Methods:
- Survey of Massachusetts state employees regarding health plan selection criteria.
- Analysis of employee rankings for different types of health plan information.
Main Results:
- Cost and benefit information were highly ranked by employees.
- Certain standardized plan performance measures did not receive high rankings.
- Employees' stated preferences may not fully align with employer-driven quality initiatives.
Conclusions:
- Current standardized quality measures may not effectively capture employee priorities.
- Future efforts should align quality metrics with employee-valued information for better health plan selection.
- Further research is needed to understand the gap between employer goals and employee preferences in health insurance markets.