Engaging Vulnerable Consumers in Developing Useful Public Healthcare Reports

Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond VA

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Our objective is to build the scientific base for effective public reporting of healthcare quality by examining the nature, type and dissemination of public reports by engaging consumers in focus groups to identify their needs in healthcare decision-making. Consistent with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, that aims to improve dissemination of measures of healthcare quality and resource use and as identified in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ) request for applications, we intend to fill two of the major gaps in the public reporting evidence base identified by AHRQ through the engagement of subgroups of AHRQ's priority populations and Medicare beneficiaries. We will address the major gaps identified by AHRQ: 1) improve the design and presentation of public reports to meet the needs to consumers, and 2) increase consumer's use and the dissemination of public reports. Our application aims to help fill the gaps identified above through a qualitative developmental study that engages consumers in the Commonwealth of Virginia, most specifically vulnerable Medicare beneficiaries with type II diabetes: African Americans and Latinos compared with a White population. We will engage these target populations in focus groups to ask them about the role public reports of quality data may play in meeting their personal health care needs. Specifically we aim to determine: (1) How public reports can be designed to address the varying information needs of vulnerable populations as they make decisions for their personal health care including selection of health care providers - both physicians and hospitals. (2) How the content, design and dissemination of public reports can best reflect meaningful information that consumers would actually use in their personal decision-making. Our qualitative study design proposes two rounds of focus groups. The first round will focus on Aim 1 and the results will be used by project staff together with Virginia Health Information (VHI) developer of Virginia consumer reports, to develop public report templates and to identify themes, both of which will be relevant in the design of the round two focus groups, which will focus on Aim 2. Final study results will be used by VHI to develop a final public report to Virginia Medicare beneficiaries on type II diabetes; further we will disseminate project findings with the assistance of our national advisory committee to ensure wide scale dissemination beyond Virginia.