By Martha Heberlein
Today, Health Affairs released a paper detailing a new (and in our opinion a very exciting!) survey – the Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS) – designed by the Urban Institute.
This internet-based survey is intended to provide rapid-cycle feedback on changes under the ACA. The goal is to replicate key outcome measures from national surveys (such as the ACS, CPS, and NHIS) on insurance coverage, access to and use of health care, and health care affordability, but to provide outcomes on a much more timely basis.
Additionally, given the flexibility of the design, the researchers have the ability to include supplemental questions each quarter to get at hot topics that would both help guide ACA implementation and identify challenges. For example, in the June/July 2013 fielding, the survey explored consumers’ readiness to make informed decisions about their health insurance coverage, including having an understanding of basic health insurance concepts, such as premiums and deductibles, as well as where they might go for more information. (Read more about the findings in the Health Affairs piece.)
But certainly the most exciting thing for us is that, along with the Packard Foundation, CCF is helping to fund and analyze a child supplement to the survey, thanks in part to the Atlantic Philanthropies, among others. This supplement mirrors the questions asked of adults and includes key access, service use, and affordability measures. It also examines insurance coverage more deeply, which should highlight problems or benefits for particular subgroups of children who may either be more at risk or have more to gain under the ACA.
By the end of April/early May we hope to have out a brief that provides the first look at how children are faring under reform, thanks to this new instrument.
Urban is also maintaining a website (http://www.urban.org/hrms) that will be a repository for all the products from the survey – including short, targeted issue briefs, as well as more detailed tables and fact sheets. Stay tuned!
