The quality of care under a managed-care program for dual eligibles.
OBJECTIVE
Our objective in this study was to compare the quality of care provided under the Minnesota Senior Health Options (MSHO), a special program designed to serve dually eligible older persons, to care provided to controls who received fee-for-service Medicare and Medicaid managed care.


METHODS
Two control groups were used; one was drawn from nonenrollees living in the same area (Control-In) and another from comparable individuals living in another urban area where the program was not available (Control-Out). Cohorts living in the community and in nursing homes were included. Quality measures for both groups included mortality rates, preventable hospital admissions, and preventable emergency room (ER) visits. For the community group, nursing home admission rates were also tracked. For nursing home residents, quality measures included quality indicators derived from the Minimum Data Set.


RESULTS
There were no differences in mortality rates for either cohort. MSHO had fewer short-stay nursing home admissions but no difference for stays 90 days or longer. MSHO community and nursing home residents had fewer preventable hospital and ER visits compared to Control-In. There were no major differences in nursing home quality indicator rates.


CONCLUSIONS
The cost of changing the model of care for dual eligibles from a mixture of fee-for-service and managed care to a merged managed-care approach cannot be readily justified by the improvements in quality observed.
Kane
Robert L
RL
University of Minnesota School of Public Health, D351 Mayo (MMC 197), 420 Delaware Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. kanex001@umn.edu
Homyak
Patricia
P
Bershadsky
Boris
B
Lum
Terry
T
Flood
Shannon
S
Zhang
Hui
H
D000368:Aged; D003258:Consumer Behavior / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008329:Managed Care Programs / Q000191:economics / Q000592:standards*; D008484:Medicaid / Q000191:economics; D006278:Medicare / Q000191:economics; D008910:Minnesota; D009026:Mortality / Q000639:trends; D009735:Nursing Homes / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D012044:Regression Analysis