REPORT PROPOSES FRAMEWORK FOR CHILD HEALTH CARE MEASUREMENT  

Measure Alignment, Expansion of Well-Care Measures Focus of Recommendations

WASHINGTON – A new report co-authored by staff at the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) and the Commonwealth Fund proposes steps to drive quality measurement and improvement for child health care. The report, Quality of Child Health Care: Expanding the Scope and Flexibility of Measurement Approaches, presents a strategic approach to build support and infrastructure of such measurement. The study was funded and co-authored by the Commonwealth Fund.

A number of studies have highlighted deficiencies in preventive and other health care services provided to children. For instance, while 1 in 6 children have a developmental or behavioral disability that may affect their readiness for school, these disabilities often go undetected. To clarify how often such deficiencies in care occur, the report proposes to expand on existing measures, such as NCQA’s Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS®), in order to more thoroughly document the content and quality of care children receive. 

“Our research doesn’t just ask whether children are receiving care—we’re also looking to see whether the care children receive meets their most pressing needs,” said Sarah Scholle, M.P.H., Dr.P.H., co-author and NCQA Assistant Vice President, Research and Analysis. “This kind of data will help policymakers understand how well their community is doing—and is useful information for parents, families, and employers as well.”

Measuring the quality of children’s health care comes with challenges. The evidence base surrounding pediatric care is uneven. To improve measurement, NCQA recommends a framework for prevention that includes measures at specific milestone ages: before an infant turns six months old and by a child’s second, sixth, thirteenth and eighteenth birthdays. These measurement areas focus on aspects of care such as immunizations, screening, and assessment and discussion of risks. 

“Too often, our nation’s children are not receiving the preventive services they need. Creating better measures of such care and encouraging their use are essential to improving the quality of preventive care for children and youth,” said Edward L. Schor, M.D., co-author and Vice President, The Commonwealth Fund. “The steps outlined in this report provide a framework for long-term success in quality measurement and improvement.”

Federal and state policymakers are looking for ways to improve the quality of children’s health care and expand measurement as part of that strategy. The recently enacted Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) authorizes federal support of child health measure development and directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to identify a core set of quality measures that should be collected by all state-run CHIP programs beginning in 2010.

“The new CHIPRA legislation emphasizes evaluating whether children are receiving high quality care, and it lays out an approach for standardized measurement of children’s health care across the country in Medicaid and CHIP,” said Scholle. “Our report can help inform the next steps taken to lay out those standardized measures so that we can make comparisons across the states.” 

NCQA is currently preparing detailed measure specifications and will conduct a field test of proposed Comprehensive Well-Care topic areas. The issue brief is available on the Commonwealth Fund’s Web site at http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Publications/.  To view the full report on child health measurement, visit http://www.ncqa.org/tabid/385/Default.aspx.

NCQA is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to improving health care quality. NCQA’s Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS®) is the most widely used performance measurement tool in health care. NCQA accredits and certifies a wide range of health care organizations and recognizes physicians in key clinical areas. NCQA is committed to providing health care quality information through the Web, media and data licensing agreements in order to help consumers, employers and others make more informed health care choices.

# # #