Advancing Children's Health Care and Outcomes Through the Pediatric Quality Measures Program

Developing Measures for Pediatric Quality: Methods and Experiences of the CHIPRA Pediatric Quality Measures Program Grantees

“…For the PQMP, the CoEs convened a work group to determine what attributes constituted a good pediatric measure in the context of Medicaid/ CHIP reporting. 8 For example, CHIPRA asked for measures at the state, plan, and provider levels that could identify disparities by racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and special health care needs and that would be understandable to families and providers. Although the attributes chosen emphasize measure characteristics important to Medicaid/CHIP, they align with those used by other national evaluation programs, including the Blueprint for the CMS Measures Management System, 9 the National Committee for Quality Assurance's HEDIS measures, 10 …”

Primary Care Physicians' Experiences With and Attitudes Toward Pediatric Quality Reporting

“…7,8 Quality measurement and reporting in child health care has lagged behind efforts in adult health care, but many recent state and federal initiatives have sought to close that gap. 5,[9][10][11][12][13][14] The largest example of these efforts is the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 (CHIPRA) Quality Demonstration Grant Program ("the demonstration"), which provided $100 million in funding from 2010 to 2015 for 10 grants, including 18 states, to identify effective, replicable strategies for enhancing quality of care for children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. 9 Six demonstration states used funding to develop quality reporting programs that target primary care physicians who care for children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP.…”

Maintenance of Certification and the Challenge of Professionalism

“…These include the scarcity of validated pediatric quality measures, small sample sizes in pediatrics, and the absence of a national pediatric database akin to the Medicare database for adults. 56 Even when these limitations are overcome, the measurable effect size of an individual physician's contribution to an outcome is likely to be modest among the many other factors that affect patient outcomes, including access to care, patient compliance, the contributions of other health care team members, and genetic polymorphisms. These factors notwithstanding, physicians have a professional obligation not only to deliver the best care, but to attempt to continuously improve care in the practice, community, and society.…”