SSRS Health Policy and Healthcare Research

Insights Into the Healthcare Opinions and Experiences of Patients and Professionals

SSRS is a proven leader in health policy and healthcare research.

We are a preferred survey partner of many of the nation’s elite organizations working to improve public health policy, measure healthcare gaps and needs, increase citizens’ access to quality care, and influence healthy behavior.

Features

  • Discerning health policy clients rely on SSRS for our expertise in accessing hard-to-reach populations
  • We work with clients to measure healthcare gaps, needs, and trends, increase citizens’ access to quality care, and influence healthy behavior
  • Our team has accrued vast experience gathering data to inform effective health policy
  • Our data have been used to advise policymakers on preparing for wide scale disasters such as foodborne diseases or biological terrorist attacks
  • SSRS public health surveys range from quick-turnaround one-day phone polls during crises, to extended-field, multi-mode surveys of unique populations

Health Research at the State, County, and City Level

For more than 15 years, SSRS has worked with healthcare and health policy researchers to conduct methodologically-sophisticated surveys of populations to gain insight into respondents’ experiences with healthcare and health insurance and to better understand health behaviors across all demographics. We have collected hundreds of thousands of interviews for states, counties, and cities working with health departments, universities, and non-profit organizations.

Reaching the Uninsured and Underinsured

SSRS tracked the impact of the Affordable Care Act by interviewing tens of thousands of Americans potentially affected by the law, including a longitudinal study on behalf of the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, tracking over 1,000 uninsured Californians as healthcare exchanges and Medicaid expansion became available. Many of our studies have focused on low-income Americans and provide a national and statewide view into places like Arkansas, Kentucky, Texas, and Missouri.

Helping States Understand the Needs of Their Populations

SSRS works with researchers that need to understand access to care, coverage and quality in their state. Our team has conducted surveys measuring health insurance rates along with healthcare access quality in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, and Oklahoma.  Our ongoing partnerships with the Urban Institute and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts allowed policy makers and researchers in Massachusetts to track the effect of the state’s unique health insurance legislation before the implementation of the ACA.  Since 2013, SSRS has continued working with the Center for Health Information and Analysis (CHIA) to document health insurance coverage, access, and the use of health care in the state.

Opinions and Experiences of Healthcare Professionals

SSRS helps researchers understand the experiences and views of healthcare professionals. The Commonwealth Fund and its partners worked with SSRS on a study of Federally Qualified Health Centers, which examined how these organizations were preparing for the increase in healthcare demand as people gained insurance through the ACA. For the Dartmouth Institute of Health Policy and Clinical Practice, SSRS surveyed leaders of Accountable Care Organizations to advance understanding of how these organizations are structured, their capabilities, and their performance.  We have conducted many studies of physicians, including a large international study assessing healthcare system performance from the perspective of primary care physicians in the U.S. and ten other countries.

Responding to Immediate Public Health Issues

When there is a health crisis facing the nation, SSRS can help policy makers quickly understand what is happening and how the public or specific populations are responding to the situation. After the 2009 breakout of H1N1 influenza, SSRS fielded more than 15 surveys on behalf of the Harvard School of Public Health, tracking public reaction in real-time as the public health emergency unfolded. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Kaiser Family Foundation and their partners turned to SSRS to conduct interviews with people in affected areas of the city and with evacuees in Houston; SSRS continued to collect data in New Orleans to track the aftermath of the disaster through 2015.

Our data have been used to advise policymakers on preparing for wide scale disasters such as foodborne diseases or biological terrorist attacks. SSRS’s public health surveys range from quick-turnaround one-day phone polls during crises, to extended-field, multi-mode surveys of unique populations.

How can we help you design and execute your research?