http://altarum.org/health-policy-blog/to-improve-medicaid-measure-everywhere

“In God we trust. All others must bring data.”

So said W. Edwards Deming, a management consultant widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in quality management of the 20^th century.

One would think that in the data-driven 21^stcentury, we’d have come a long way in applying that dictum to health care. To some degree, we have—Medicaid and CHIP programs that contract with managed care entities include provisions around quality measurement and reporting in state contracts and make use of the Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set. This reporting serves as the foundation of targeted quality improvement projects in states and helps inform consumer choice through products such as the state-published report cards and annual rankings of health insurance plans set out by the National Committee for Quality Assurance.

But this kind of systematic, comprehensive reporting is largely and notably absent from fee-for-service Medicaid and CHIP. We can’t afford to go without it. It’s imperative that we know what works well in Medicaid and CHIP and what areas of the program need attention or improvement. These programs combine to cover more than one in four Americans and command more than half a trillion dollars in federal and state spending per year.

With this in mind, Safety Net Health Plan members of the Association for Community Affiliated Plans (ACAP) have come together to support a suite of legislation on Capitol Hill. This legislation would extend the benefits of quality measurement and reporting to all Medicaid and CHIP delivery systems—including areas such as fee-for-service that have typically not provided regular, systematic quality data.

The good news is that lawmakers in Washington have taken the first steps toward bringing quality measurement forward into the 21^st century by introducing two bills.