220-141: Florida Medicaid Enrollees' Perceptions of Care with Mental Health Services

Publication Date: 6/1/2011

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Description:

The purpose of this project was to administer the ECHO survey to a statewide sample of 3,954 Medicaid recipients who had received mental health services to assess their perceptions regarding the quality of mental health services received. The report summarizes the responses of the 724 adult and 660 caregivers of children who used mental health services and who responded to the ECHO survey administered between June 1, 2010 and August 31, 2010.

The findings from this study can assist AHCA in several important ways. First, because the statewide implementation of mental health managed care in Florida has been completed this project provides AHCA with an ongoing system for evaluating the overall quality of Medicaidfunded mental health services from a consumer perspective. With a sufficient number of respondents the Agency could use enrollee ECHO survey responses to compare Medicaid mental health service user perceptions of care across the MCOs operating in Florida in five domains: (1) their ability to obtain treatment quickly, (2) perceptions of clinician communication with consumers, (3) perceived improvement of symptoms, (4) consumer ability to obtain treatment from their plan and information about their plans and (5) information provided about treatment options would permit the identification of managed care entities whose performance differs substantially from other plans operating in Florida and which may need to be examined more closely. Second, given that AHCA now requires that each managed care entity to administer selected ECHO survey items as part of their plan's internal assessment of service user satisfaction, the responses obtained from the plans can be compared, if available, to the responses obtained from the statewide Medicaid sample.