SURVEYS OF MEMBERS OF HEALTH CARE INSURANCE PLANS: METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES

Abstract

Health care insurance companies often conduct sample surveys of health plan members. Survey purposes include: consumer satisfaction with the plan and members’ health status, functional status, health literacy and/or health services utilization outside of the plan. Vendors or contractors typically conduct these surveys for insurers. Survey results may be used for plans’ accreditation, evaluation, quality improvement and/or marketing. This article describes typical sampling plans and data analysis strategies used in these surveys, showing how these methods may result in biased estimators of population parameters (e.g. percentage of plan members who are satisfied). Practical suggestions are given to improve these surveys: alternate sampling plans, increasing the response rate, component calculation for the survey response rate, weighted analyses, and adjustments for unit non-response. Since policy, regulation, accreditation, management and marketing decisions are based, in part, on results from these member surveys, these important and numerous surveys need to be of higher quality.

Citation

Brogan, D.J. (2003), "SURVEYS OF MEMBERS OF HEALTH CARE INSURANCE PLANS: METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES", Jacobs Kronenfeld, J. (Ed.) Reorganizing Health Care Delivery Systems: Problems of Managed (Research in the Sociology of Health Care, Vol. 21), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 3-19. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0275-4959(03)21001-2