Program evaluation gives voice to Medicaid recipients

Since July 1, 2012, the College of Social Work(CSW) has collaborated with the FSU College of Medicine (COM) and the FAMU College of Pharmacy on a unique program evaluation of the MEDS-AD Medication Therapy Management (MTM) program, implemented by the University of Florida School of Pharmacy (UF SoP) under the auspices of the Florida Association for Health Care Administration (AHCA). This collaboration has enabled CSW researchers to give voice to Medicaid recipients who have received services under the program. MEDS-ADA MTM involves pharmacists at the UF SoP contacting medically complex Medicaid recipients, reviewing their medications, making recommendations for medication changes to their doctors, and following up to determine the recipients’ continued adherence.

In order to determine the effectiveness of the program, the research team contacts MEDS-AD recipients and asks about their satisfaction with the program, specifically how the pharmacists interact with them and how the program affects them. The evaluation is unique in that recipients are asked directly how they would like to improve the MEDS-AD program. Then, the CSW research team provides verbatim responses that are used by Florida Medicaid administrative personnel to enhance the program.

These phone interviews are conducted from the CSW Institute for Social Work Research Call Center, established to provide the privacy and confidentiality needed for interviews involving personal information. The Call Center uses technology to record and “echo” transcribe the individual interviews. The research team then codes the interviews using Atlas/ti qualitative software. Also, the research team uses Microsoft ACCESS to track the interviews and document the status of each potential interviewee. Since the inception of the project, the research team has contacted 176 potential interviewees and completed forty interviews with Medicaid recipients.

Notably, this work is done, primarily, by CSW graduate students who coordinate the research, conduct, transcribe and analyze the data, and develop trouble-shoot the inevitable problems associated with primary data collection. Current student team members are Grace Ambrose, Michael Barnes, Eunyoung Lee, Kelly O’Sullivan and Alison Ryan.

In addition to recipient information, physicians who prescribe and oversee medications for Medicaid patients are instrumental in effective care. Currently, the research team is contacting the primary care physicians involved with MEDS-AD MTM recipients in order to capture the physicians’ perspective on enhancing the program. Physician involvement is crucial, as they are prescribers of medications and their buy-in is required for medication changes suggested by the pharmacists.

These data will be integrated with information on best practices derived by pharmacists at the FAMU College of Pharmacy and quantitative analyses conducted by research team members at the FSU College of Medicine to present a multi-faceted picture of the program with suggestions for enhancement and continuation.

To learn more about the project, contact Dr. Jean Munn (jmunn@fsu.edu).