Medicaid Managed Care - U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging

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Ch.pt 3
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<strong>Medicaid</strong> beneficiaries, 9 reported no specific monitoring efforts designed
to assess quality of and access to care for this population.' For example,
only those states with programs targeted specifically to disabled
beneficiaries analyzed complaints and grievances by eligibility category to
learn the views of disabled enrollees. Also, two states we visited reported
using the results of their monitoring efforts to apply incentives and
sanctions to influence health plan behavior. However, neither state ha
encountered treatment of disabled enrollees that would warrant the use of
sanctions.
Among those nine states without specific monitoring efforts for disabled
enrollees, there was acknowledgment that more needed to be done.
Officials in eight of these states said more focused efforts would be
needed as more disabled beneficiaries enrolled in prepaid plans. For
example, these states currently rely heavily on disabled recipients'
freedom to disenroll from or transfer among prepaid plans and the
existence of a complaint and grievance program. However, disabled
beneficiaries may choose to disenroll rather than complain about the care
they receive and, even if they complain, their concerns may be masked by
a low overall complaint rate for all eligibility categories unless complaints
are analyzed by eligibility group. Thus, without more focused effort, such
measures will not reveal systemic problems in care for disabled enrollees.
Current monitoring programs do have the potential to provide more
information about care delivered to disabled beneficiaries, as the
following examples indicate:
States could extend their current efforts to assess specific aspects of
health care delivery to disabled enrollees. Some states that do not assess
care for disabled individuals do conduct assessments of maternal and
child care. States that conduct reviews of prenatal, well child, or asthma
care could require studies of care for specific disabling conditions present
among the plan's enrollees For example, a Massachusetts prepaid plan, on
its own initiative, studied the management of pressure sores, a common
cause of hospitalization, as an area of quality improvement One result was
the development of a variety of methods, including new screening
protocols for earlier intervention and an accelerated schedule for
wheelchair seating evaluations, to further improve care.
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