Evaluation of the Iowa Care Program: Baseline Information for the Medical Home Expansion

This report evaluates a variety of aspects of the IowaCare program from the perspective of the consumer. Enrollee perceptions of the IowaCare program were evaluated using mailed and telephone surveys with a sample of current IowaCare enrollees. A companion report evaluates outcomes of care for IowaCare enrollees using Medicaid claims and enrollment data. The survey instrument used in this study was based on the most recent version of the Consumer Assessment of Health Plan Study (CAHPS®) 4.0. The use of CAHPS in Iowa is part of a national demonstration of the instrument, an effort to develop and implement standardized measures for assessing the quality of health plans from the consumer perspective. Supplementary items were added to the CAHPS questionnaire including additional demographics and more specific chronic condition information; to better define the types of chronic conditions experienced by enrollees in IowaCare, we included checklists of chronic physical and mental health conditions.