Consumers shopping for coverage on Arkansas’ health insurance exchange next year would have access to customer satisfaction survey results and other measures of health care quality under a proposal by an advisory board Wednesday.
At a meeting in Little Rock, the exchange’s steering committee unanimously recommended that the Arkansas Insurance Department begin collecting information on 19 quality measures from the four companies offering plans on the exchange.
The department would then compile the information in a report that would be available to consumers during the open enrollment period for coverage that starts in 2016.
“The consumer will be able to look at the quality of the plan they’re purchasing,” Zane Chrisman, an attorney specialist with the Insurance Department said.
She said some of the information in the report might also encourage Arkansans with chronic health conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure to better manage their health care. It might also encourage efforts by insurance companies to help their customers better manage those conditions, she said.
The measures recommended for collection by the steering committee include 11 that would be taken from customer satisfaction surveys. They would tell how patients rated the plan’s customer service, how they rate their doctor and how often they were able to get care as quickly as they needed it.
The eight other measures would be taken from claims submitted to the insurance companies. Examples include the percent of patients with diabetes who received a blood test for hemoglobin A1C during the year and the percent of patients who had a follow-up visit with a mental health professional within seven days of being discharged from a hospital after a hospitalization for mental illness.
The data collection effort, which must be approved by Insurance Commissioner Jay Bradford, would also help insurance companies prepare for the 2017 plan year, when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is expected to produce a national quality rating system for plans on insurance exchanges, Deputy Insurance Commissioner Cynthia Crone said.
The Arkansas Health Insurance Marketplace board, created by the state Legislature, hopes to establish a state-run exchange in 2016, in time for coverage starting in 2017, that would replace the exchange set up for the state by the federal government.
If that happens, Arkansas could use the federal rating system or its own system, Chrisman said.
“This is really a practice run,” Crone said. “It’s a pilot to do the collection, begin to analyze and begin to look at how we would report this, and then our next big step when we get it is, how do we turn it into something consumers can understand and use?”
Set up in every state under the 2010 health care overhaul law, exchanges allow consumers to shop for coverage and apply for subsidies to help them pay for it.
As of Aug. 31, more than 211,000 people were enrolled in Arkansas’ exchange, including 172,671 who were enrolled in Medicaid-funded plans under the so-called private option.