Patient activation among Medicare beneficiaries Segmentation to promote informed health care decision making

Purpose - The purpose of this research is to identify audience segments of Medicare beneficiaries, for the development of targeted and tailored communication activities to promote informed health care decision making. Design/methodology/approach - Secondary analysis was conducted on data from the 2001 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey. The 9,520 Medicare beneficiaries who had complete data on key variables constituted the analytic sample. Findings - Cluster analysis identified four audience segments that varied separately with regard to health care decision-making skills and motivation. Those in the active segment are skilled and motivated. Those in the passive segment are unskilled and unmotivated. Those in the high effort segment are motivated, but unskilled. And those in the complacent segment are skilled, but unmotivated. Additional analyses showed that the segments also varied on several additional variables of interest, such as knowledge, income, education, health behavior, health status, and preferred information sources. And finally, the segmentation screening tool was developed and shown to function adequately as a simple method to conduct segmentation in the field. Research limitations/implications - Future research should further examine the reliability and validity of the segmentation scheme. Originality/value - This research identified four segments of Medicare beneficiaries that vary with regard to health care decision-making skills and motivation, and developed a simple tool to conduct segmentation.