HONOLULU — The Hawai’i Medical Service Association (HMSA) and its HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) affiliate, Health Plan Hawai’i, recently began conducting the 2000 Member Satisfaction Survey. Approximately 125,000 members in HMSA’s Preferred Provider Plan, 65C Plus and Health Plan Hawai’i
HONOLULU — The Hawai’i Medical Service Association (HMSA) and its HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) affiliate, Health Plan Hawai’i, recently began conducting the 2000 Member Satisfaction Survey.
Approximately 125,000 members in HMSA’s Preferred Provider Plan, 65C Plus and Health Plan Hawai’i are being surveyed, via mail.
Members are being asked for their perspective on access to medical care, ease of making appointments, thoroughness of treatment, quality of the practitioner, attention given to what the patient says, friendliness of the office staff, and overall quality of care and services provided by the practitioner.
In addition, members will be asked to rate their experience with their HMSA health plan.
“The survey provides HMSA and our participating physicians and psychologists with important member feedback,” said Bob Nickel, HMSA senior vice president.
“We use this data to identify areas of high member satisfaction, and areas where we and our providers can do more in terms of delivering quality care and service,” he added.
HMSA conducts surveys for several reasons.
“We voluntarily adopted the provisions of the federal Health Care Consumer Bill of Rights and Responsibilities,” said Cliff Cisco, HMSA senior vice president.
“It clearly states that consumers have the right to information about health plan characteristics, including satisfaction measures,” he added.
“In addition, the Hawai’i Patient Bill of Rights and Responsibilities Act, passed in 1998, requires health plans to report to the state insurance commissioner information on measures of quality, access and satisfaction,” Cisco said.
Members are being asked to rate their satisfaction with services received from a specific health care provider they saw during 1999.
HMSA participating physicians and psychologists around the state will receive their own aggregate results as well as the total results of the survey.
This will allow them to compare their patient satisfaction levels regarding quality of services and access to care with those of the total survey population.
During the summer of 1999, HMSA mailed surveys to more than 196,000 members. By the end of August, 1999, more than 101,000 had been completed and returned.
Results indicated that patients in Hawai’i are highly satisfied with their physicians and their HMSA health plan.
Nearly 92 percent of respondents said they would recommend their physician to family and friends.
