PEOPLE WANT MORE INFORMATION FOR HEALTH CHOICES, SURVEY FINDS
Most people would like to have more information to help them choose hospitals, doctors, and health care plans, a new survey by Louis Harris and Associates has found.
Many large employers already receive reports from health maintenance organizations and other health plans on how satisfied their members are. Many employers and health plans also collect appraisals of doctors and hospitals by patients. But such reports are not often shown to the consumers themselves, company benefits executives say.
In the Harris survey, which was commissioned by Towers Perrin, a benefits consulting firm, 66% said they would like to see report cards for hospitals, 58% said they would like to see consumer ratings of physicians, and 52% wanted ratings for health plans.
The telephone survey of 1081 people was weighted to reflect all United States heads of households or spouses age 21 or older. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points. Most were employees of large companies, which other surveys have shown are most likely to offer choices of health plans.




