Studies from RAND Corporation Have Provided New Information about Insurance (Sex Differences In Medicare Beneficiaries’ Experiences By Low-income Status): Insurance

2022 NOV 18 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health Policy and Law Daily -- Investigators publish new report on Insurance. According to news reporting originating from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Medicare beneficiaries dually eligible for Medicaid are a low-income group who are often in poor health. Little research has examined sex differences in patient experience by dual/low-income subsidy (LIS) status.”

Financial support for this research came from CMS.

Our news editors obtained a quote from the research from RAND Corporation, “Cross-sectional comparison by sex and low-income status. We used linear regression to compare 6 case mix-adjusted patient experience measures (on a 0-100 scale) by sex within non-dual/LIS and dual/LIS beneficiary groups among 549,603 respondents 65 years and older to the 2016-2017 Medicare Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems surveys of beneficiary experience with Medicare (mail with telephone follow-up of nonrespondents, 42% response rate).Dual/LIS male beneficiaries reported worse patient experiences on all 6 measures than female beneficiaries, with scores 1 to 2 percentage points lower for 3 measures and less than 1 percentage point lower for the other 3 measures. For 4 of the 6 measures, sex differences among dual/LIS beneficiaries were significantly larger than those among non-dual/LIS beneficiaries. In all 4 instances, the gaps between men and women among dual/LIS beneficiaries favored women; P< .05 for all differences discussed.Low-income male Medicare beneficiaries are more likely to report poor patient experiences, possibly because of lower health literacy, less patient activation, and smaller social networks, along with provider responses to these characteristics. Efforts to address these patient-level factors should happen in parallel with structural-level approaches to train and prepare providers to ensure attentive, respectful patient-centered care for all patients.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Additionally, targeted use of ombudsmen and interventions may help reduce inequities.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Sex Differences In Medicare Beneficiaries’ Experiences By Low-income Status. The American Journal of Managed Care, 2022;28(9). The American Journal of Managed Care can be contacted at: Managed Care & Healthcare Communications Llc, 666 Plainsboro Rd, Ste 300, Plainsboro, NJ 08536, USA.

The news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Marc N. Elliott, RAND Corporation, 1776 Main St, Pittsburgh, PA 90401, United States. Additional authors for this research include Amelia M. Haviland, Jacob W. Dembosky, Sarah Gaillot and Loida Tamayo.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.37765/ajmc.2022.89222. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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