“The Affordable Care Act created the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMS Innovation Center) within the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to “test innovative payment and service delivery models to reduce program expenditures…while preserving or enhancing the quality of care furnished to individuals under” Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Since its inception, we have launched more than 50 such innovative models—targeting specific health conditions, care episodes, provider types, and communities. From 2018 to 2020, an estimated 528,000 providers, serving more than 28 million Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP beneficiaries, participated in these models.”
“In 2021, after the CMS Innovation Center’s first ten years in existence, we conducted an in-depth performance review, and equity was one area of focus. Health equity is defined by CMS as ‘the attainment of the highest level of health for all people, where everyone has a fair and just opportunity to attain their optimal health regardless of race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic status, geography, preferred language, or other factors that affect access to care and health outcomes.'”
“One of many lessons learned from our review was that health equity was not always a priority in model design, participant recruitment and selection, implementation, or evaluation. As a result, some models have not included numbers of underserved beneficiaries proportional to their presence in the general Medicare population. Further, limited and incomplete sociodemographic data has stymied robust monitoring and evaluation of model outcomes for all populations.”
“This lesson is not merely an academic concern: Equity is a critical component of health care quality. For example, the Institute of Medicine’s 2001 report Crossing the Quality Chasm included as one of its six aims for health care systems providing equitable care that does not vary in quality because of personal characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, geographic location and socioeconomic status.”
“To specifically address the CMS Innovation Center’s statutory charge to test ways to enhance health care quality, we have included ‘Advancing Health Equity’ as one of our five strategic objectives for realizing the CMS Innovation Center’s 2030 vision: ‘A health system that achieves equitable outcomes through high quality, affordable, person-centered care.’ To this end, equity will be embedded throughout our models and initiatives in four key ways…” Read the full article here.
Source: CMS Innovation Center Launches New Initiative To Advance Health Equity – By Dora Lynn Hughes, March 3, 2022. Health Affairs.
