June 19, 2009. As discussion of federal health reform heats up, we’re pleased to announce the new Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Care Consumer Confidence Index (RWJF Index). SHADAC researchers have been involved in the question design and index development, and this week we released the inaugural report featuring baseline data and the change as measured in May.
The RWJF Index is a new research venture for us. We’ve typically focused on research from the state perspective, yet this index is a national measure. Nonetheless we feel that the Index is important for our mixed audience of health policy analysts, health services researchers and policymakers. It provides an indicator of the health access concerns of the American people. We ask people about recent health care barriers as well as concerns for the future, such as worries about losing insurance coverage or being able to pay for health care expenses. These two aspects can be tracked independently and we look forward to seeing if/how this relationship changes.
We also feel that the timing for this index is critical. We were pleased to be able to establish our baseline data prior to major federal health reform legislation and feel that we will have an excellent measure to use in monitoring reform, should legislation pass at the federal level. This information will contribute to the evaluation of federal reform initiatives.
The Index is comprised of a set of health care questions, including insurance coverage, in the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center’s Surveys of Consumers. For over 50 years, data from these surveys have proven to be representative and accurate indicators for understanding and forecasting changes in the national economy.
From this data we created the RWJF Index and established a baseline from which to gauge changes in consumer confidence in health care over time. This is a unique measure for access to health care, but structurally quite similar to other consumer confidence indices. The third week of each month we will update the Index with the previous month’s data. If Americans are feeling good about their health care, the RWJF Index will go up. But if Americans are becoming more worried, the index will go down.
The RWJF Index, along with detailed methodology and results, is available at www.rwjf.org/confidence.