title: Choosing a health plan: what information will consumers use?
abstract: Employers and policymakers are looking for ways to encourage competition among health plans, thus lowering costs and improving quality. Employers hope to foster competition among health plans by creating standardized measures of quality that supplement the traditional benefits and cost information employees use to compare plans and make choices. This DataWatch examines employees' interest in standardized measures of plan performance. Results from a survey of Massachusetts state employees show that cost and benefit information receive high rankings, but certain plan performance information does not.
authors.affiliation: Center for Health and Long-Term Care Research, LifePlans, Inc., Waltham, MA, USA.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tumlinson
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Bottigheimer
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mahoney
authors.forename: E M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Stone
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hendricks
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003258:Consumer Behavior; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D005260:Female; D006264:Health Benefit Plans, Employee / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008404:Massachusetts; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care / Q000145:classification*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires