Strengthening the Core Set of Healthcare Quality Measures for Children Enrolled in Medicaid, 2016 

This report is the Measure Applications Partnership’s (MAP‘s third set of annual recommendations to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for strengthening and revising measures in the Core Set of Health Care Quality Measures for Children Enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP (Child Core Set). MAP supported the continued use of all but two of the 26 measures in the Child Core Set. In addition, MAP proposed five measures for phased addition to the Child Core Set to help improve maternity care, behavioral health, and care for individuals with sickle cell disease. Although states are increasingly reporting on standardized measures that can be used to compare and benchmark state performance, MAP identified high priority gap areas that lack adequate metrics for measuring quality improvement, including care coordination, adolescent transition to adult-focused healthcare, and care integration. MAP identified several strategic issues related to alignment, care coordination, and linking healthcare with community supports and services.The identified strategic issues and gaps will guide future annual revisions to further strengthen the Child Core Set.