Florida Medicaid Program To Use Disease Management Of America Survey Instrument To Guage Participant Satisfaction In Disease Management Programs

Florida Medicaid, one of the nation’s largest Medicaid Programs, will use a new Disease Management Association of America (DMAA) survey instrument to gauge participant satisfaction with Florida Medicaid Reform health plan programs for congestive heart failure, diabetes and other chronic conditions.

Florida Medicaid joins other major health care entities that have chosen the DMAA Participant Satisfaction Survey and Usage Guidelines for evaluating consumer satisfaction with disease management services, a key indicator of program success. The survey generated widespread interest shortly after its release at the December 2006 DMAA annual meeting.

“Florida’s adoption of our survey speaks to the survey’s quality and extensive effort behind its development,” DMAA President and CEO Tracey Moorhead said. “With Medicaid quickly becoming a presence in chronic disease care nationally -- and Florida a leader in this area -- we’re particularly gratified by the state’s decision.”

Florida will administer the survey telephonically to recipients enrolled in the Medicaid Reform health plans’ disease management programs. There are currently 16 Reform health plans that provide disease management programs for HIV/AIDS, congestive heart failure, diabetes, hypertension and asthma. State officials expect to roll out the survey in September 2007.

The DMAA survey, developed with support from J.D. Power and Associates, comprises four modules that evaluate various aspects of disease management programs. The survey asks participants to rate access to care, coordination of care, improvements to quality of life and ability to self-manage chronic conditions. The survey gathers other basic data, such as type of program, nature of the disease and respondent demographics.

DMAA is asking organizations that use the survey to voluntarily submit de-identified results to a new database DMAA will build for use in quality improvement and program refinement efforts. Organizations that contribute to the database will have access to it for benchmarking or process improvement efforts.

“In the end, this is about improving quality,” Moorhead said. “Participant satisfaction is sometimes overlooked with the focus on clinical and financial outcomes. While those certainly are essential measures, understanding participant satisfaction is important to seeing the complete picture and tailoring care appropriately.”

DMAA began developing the survey after finding that, except for diabetes management programs, no prevalent and systematic approach for measuring participant satisfaction exists within the disease management community. DMAA identified the satisfaction survey tool as a key organizational goal to promote high quality standards for disease management and care coordination programs.