The Gallup-Healthways Daily Tracking Survey: A New Data Source for Assessing the Impacts of Health Reform

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index (WBI) is part of the Gallup Corporation’s daily tracking poll, featuring questions on health insurance, health status, and access to care. The Affordable Care Act will bring rapid changes to the health care system in 2014, but existing national health-related surveys take several months or years to become available. Therefore, we have analyzed the Gallup-Healthways’ WBI in order to assess its ability to provide real-time estimates of the impact of the ACA on key health-related outcomes. We will present comparisons of the Gallup-Healthways WBI’s health insurance, health status, and access to care measures to other national surveys. These comparisons show that the Gallup-Healthways WBI tracks well with other national surveys on the uninsured rate nationally, by state, and over time. We will also present uninsured rates and access to care measures from the Gallup-Healthways WBI for the first quarter of 2014, as well as the quarterly trend from the 2013 through the first quarter of 2014.

We have compared the Gallup-Healthways WBI to established surveys on demographics, health insurance, access to care, and health. Data sources were Gallup-Healthways WBI, Current Population Survey, American Community Survey, Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, National Health Interview Survey, and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.  Demographic measures included age, race/ethnicity, education, and income. Insurance outcomes were coverage rates by type, state, and year.  Access measures included having a usual source of care and experiencing cost-related delays in care.  Health measures were self-reported health and history of specific disease diagnoses.

 

The Gallup-Healthways WBI post-weighted sample was similar in age, race/ethnicity, and education to other surveys, though the Gallup-Healthways WBI sample is slightly older, has fewer minorities, and is more highly educated than in other national surveys. In addition, income was more frequently missing.  The Gallup-Healthways WBI produced similar national, state, and time-trend estimates on uninsured rates to the other national surveys. However, the Gallup-Healthways WBI produced less comparable estimates of coverage type, in particular for public coverage.  Access to care and health status were similar in the Gallup-Healthways WBI and other surveys.

For the first quarter of 2014, the total Gallup-Healthways WBI sample will be approximately 45,000 adults. Using this data, we expect to be able to measure national changes in the uninsured rate from 2013 through the first quarter of 2014. In addition, we will present results, if any, on changes in access measures, which include having a usual source of care and experiencing cost-related delays in care. We do not expect to be able to characterize changes in insurance coverage type, as our earlier work indicates the Gallup-Healthways WBI measures for insurance type produce substantially different results from the other surveys.