CMS releases Medicaid and CHIP Scorecard

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has released its Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program Scorecard, intended to reflect each state's progress in increasing the reporting of beneficiary health outcomes. The American Hospital Association reports that scorecard includes measures voluntarily reported by states and federally reported measures in three areas: state health system performance, state administrative accountability and federal administrative accountability.

According to CMS, 53 new data points were reported by states across the 12 measures within the state health system performance portion, including measures on postpartum care; well child visits; potentially avoidable hospitalizations for diabetes among adults; and follow-up after hospitalization for mental health among adults. This is the second such scorecard with improvements planned later this year for the measure set and website, CMS said.

The Scorecard also sheds light on important questions about the scope of Medicaid and CHIP. The National Context page presents data to answer the questions:

·   Who enrolls in Medicaid and CHIP?

·   What are annual expenditures for Medicaid and CHIP?

·   What data are CMS and states developing to support program improvement?

In addition, the agency says States and CMS can use the Scorecard to drive improvements in areas such as:

·   State and federal alignment

·   Beneficiary health outcomes

·   Program administration

CMS worked with a subset of state Medicaid agencies to select measures for this first Scorecard. Many measures in the Scorecard come from public reports. For example, most measures in the State Health System Performance pillar come from the Medicaid and CHIP Child and Adult Core Sets. This approach allows CMS to align the Scorecard with existing reporting efforts.

Visit CMS for the fact sheet.