Three Out Of Four Employees Use Managed Care
You may want to beef up your advertisements in HMO employee brochures: three out of four insured U.S. workers got health coverage through managed care in 1995, a dramatic jump in two years fueled by both small businesses and self-insured large companies, a new study says.
A recent survey of 2,037 employers by KPMG Peat Marwick and Wayne State University results included:
- Small businesses, which in 1993 enrolled 78 percent of employees in conventional, fee-for-service coverage. By 1995, that dropped to 31 percent.
- Managed care now covers 61 percent of employees in self-insured plans, up from 33 percent in 1991.
- Managed care saw its most dramatic increases in point-of-service plans, which served 20 percent of workers in 1995, up from 9 percent in 1993.
(KPMG, 202/987-8000)
Research On Public Perceptions At AHA Conference
Officials at the Picker Institute last week released a study that showed one-third of hospital patients feel poorly prepared to go home, have trouble getting questions answered or feel they do not have enough input on their treatment.
"This report is a resounding cry for help from patients who feel uninvolved in the decisions about their care and feel lost in a health care maze," said Susan Edgman-Levitan, director of the Boston-based Picker Institute, at the American Hospital Association's Annual Conference last week in Washington, D.C.
Picker, a healthcare consumer research firm, surveyed 23,763 hospital patients and 13,363 patients in clinics or doctors' offices around the country in 1996. Officials said they will distribute the report and its finding to thousands of hospitaks across the country.
Its findings were echoed by focus groups conducted by the American Hospital Association. The focus groups, including 300 people from 12 states, showed patients find the health care system "confusing, expensive, unreliable and often impersonal" the association said in its report. (AHA, 202/638-1100)
New Zealanders Need To Improve On Sun Smarts
Results are in from a survey to gauge whether a $2 million melanoma warning campaign by the New Zealand Cancer Society sunk in with residents. The telephone survey quizzed 1,200 householders selected at random in the 10-week campaign last summer.
Over a typical sunny weekend, three quarters of New Zealanders were outdoors for at least three hours and about 20 percent suffered sunburn The society was also concerned that 41 percent of respondents said they felt healthier with a suntan and 75 percent of teens went sunbathing regardless of cancer risks.
New Zealand leads the world in deaths from melanoma, just ahead of Queensland in Australia. The society has invested $2 million in public awareness campaigns over the last nine years. Most of the money has come from public donations and, in earlier years, from sponsorships.