HealthDay (8/19, Reinberg) reports, “A majority of seniors who visit the Medicare Website find getting the information they need a frustrating experience,” according to research published in the Aug. 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers “had 112 people aged 50 and older, who were all computer-literate, attempt to navigate the Medicare Website. The participants were asked to use the Website to determine their eligibility for home healthcare services, select a home healthcare agency, make a decision about enrolling in the Medicare part D prescription drug program, and select a drug plan.” The results showed that “68.8 percent of the participants weren’t able to get specific information about the criteria for home healthcare services, and 80.4 percent could not choose the correct home health agency.” Meanwhile, “83.9 percent weren’t able to do the computation necessary for making a decision about which home healthcare plan to enroll in.” The researchers also found that 72.3 percent of participants had trouble “enrolling in the Medicare part D prescription drug program.”
In an email to WebMD (8/19, Hitti), Jeff Nelligan, of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), responded to the study results by writing, “Suffice i[t] to say that more research is probably needed to assess the usability of the site, and should be performed by people who have a basic understanding of the size and complexity of the program,”. He also noted that “CMS has ‘worked hard to organize and format our quality ‘compare’ tools — for hospitals and nursing homes, for example — in a consumer-friendly manner’ and that all CMS online tools are ‘tested extensively with potential users of the site.’”
