MassHealth Patient Experience Pilot Survey

What We Did:

MHQP conducted a large-scale pilot survey of Medicaid patient care experiences in the ambulatory practice setting.  The pilot surveyed over 45,000 MassHealth members who had at least one outpatient visit with a primary care provider in the preceding twelve months.  The goals of the project were to:

• assess the methodological and operational feasibility of including the Medicaid population in future statewide patient experience survey efforts at the ambulatory practice level;
• provide a model for reporting actionable performance results back to MassHealth practice sites, and disseminate results back to MassHealth practice sites included in the pilot; and
• produce population-level results to provide an initial assessment of the care experienced broadly for Medicaid patients in Massachusetts.

Who Was Involved:

This was a collaborative project with MassHealth and the Center for Health Policy and Research (CHPR) at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Why This Work Matters:

While Massachusetts and MHQP have been at the national forefront in the development and implementation of valid and reliable measures of patient care experience since 2005, a number of operational, methodological and financial challenges prevented MHQP from including MassHealth patients in the statewide survey.

MHQP’s goal was to represent the Commonwealth’s total population in statewide measures of patient care experiences.  This pilot project created a shared understanding of how to best include the voices of Medicaid patients and a growing interest in assessing and improving the provision of patient-centered care at a practice or physician level for this population.  In 2017, MHQP was awarded a new state contract to assess patient experience among Medicaid recipients.

Related Resources:

• Read a Report Final on this project