Porthole
Measuring Value-Added Quality in Medicare Advantage (307813)
*Matthew Brault, Harvard UniversityAlan Zaslavsky, Harvard Medical School
Keywords: Medicare Advantage, CAHPS, Quality, Geographic Variation
Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Medicare Advantage (MA) quality measures have helped determine the per-beneficiary payment to plans, with high-quality ones receiving a bonus percentage. Plan quality, however, can reflect the underlying health care system of the areas in which contracts of offered and so existing methods may unfairly reward plans. This paper attempts to measure value-added quality in MA contracts; that is, how MA quality scores differ from how one might expect an average plan to perform in the same contract area. Using Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) survey data from MA plans and Fee-for-service (FFS) beneficiaries, we examine the geographic variation in quality and propose several measures of added value for a range of patient experiences measures and their composites.