At last week’s Kentucky Medical Group Management Association fall conference, the Kentucky Department for Medicaid Services (KDMS) unveiled Medicaid’s newly created set of quality measures with 23 measures that meet the quality reporting standards for MIPS. Secretary of the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services Vickie Yates Brown Glisson kicked off the presentation and also announced that a private-public partnership to align healthcare quality improvement measures in the Commonwealth had been created as a part of this work (if you missed the announcement, see a replay here).
Kentuckiana Health Collaborative’s Teresa Couts, Randa Deaton, and Stephanie Clouser were onstage with Glisson as she announced this effort. What Glisson introduced – although not by name – is called the Kentucky Performance Measures Alignment Committee (PMAC), a public-private partnership between KDMS and the KHC. Members of PMAC, made up of individuals from all healthcare stakeholder types, will help form recommendations for measure prioritization in one of five key areas of focus:
Pediatrics
Acute Care
Chronic Care
Preventive Health
Behavioral Health
The goals of the core healthcare measurement set are to establish broadly agreed upon priority quality measures that improve the quality and value of care, reduce provider reporting complexity, and align Kentucky’s healthcare organizations. The final measures chosen will be included on a core healthcare measure set. Ultimately, the expectation is for the measure set to be adopted by public and private organizations to better focus improvement efforts toward shared areas.
Measurement alignment work and the reduction of reporting complexity is important. A 2013 National Quality Forum (NQF)-commissioned analysis from Bailit and Associates identified 1,367 quality measures in use across 48 different state and regional programs. Of these measures, 509 were distinct and the remaining 800+ measures overlapped or had similar focus, with one or more variations in the specifications. A common saying is that more information is better information, but that is not necessarily the case in healthcare quality measurement. Too many measures can create noise that hides what the key measures are telling us, measures that are “topped out” don’t provide meaningful information about variation between sources of care, and the cost in time and money for measures that aren’t very helpful are not worth that cost.
A core measure set can be used by providers to align their selection of MIPS measures, by health plans to measure and incent the healthcare quality of providers, and by purchasers to contract with plans and providers. All sectors can use a core measure set to improve adherence to evidence-based medicine and health outcomes.
Kentucky PMAC will oversee the measurement alignment work and determine the final core measurement set. Each of the five subcommittees will identify a recommended set of core measures for their area of focus. Each subcommittee will make their recommendations to the PMAC group for inclusion in the core measure set. Both PMAC and its subcommittees are made up of experts from all stakeholder types.
It is estimated that this work will take about 12 months. Currently, subcommittee members are being finalized and between November 2017 to March 2018, each subcommittee is expected to meet four to five times. They will then give their recommendations to the large committee, which will make final decisions and have a public comment period. The measure set is expected to be finalized in July 2018.
Anyone interested in the project can keep up with updates on the KHC website.
