MHQP shines a light on MassHealth patient experience
For many years Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP) has collected and published information on the patient experience of care in Massachusetts. The outputs have been revealing and very helpful for physician groups seeking to improve and for patients trying to identify the best places to receive care.But Medicaid (aka MassHealth) patients have never been included. Considering that Medicaid serves more than one million patients and is the biggest item in the state budget, it's about time to at least understand what's going on.MassHealth has contracted with MHQP to conduct a large-scale patient experience survey of Medicaid patients. It was a big enough deal to merit front page, lead article placement in yesterday's Boston Globe (edging out stories about the shutdown and the Patriots) so it has people's attention.The state government will have access to the full results and promises to make some of the findings public. Frankly I hope they'll publish everything so the general public, physicians and MassHealth patients can learn as much as possible. The more widely the information is publicized, the more likely it will be to have an impact.I'm looking forward to reviewing and writing about the results of the first survey, which should be available around the start of next year.
By healthcare business consultant David E. Williams, president of Health Business Group.