Identifying Health Care Quality Measures for Medicaid-Eligible Adults: Background Report

The Affordable Care Act, signed into law on March 23, 2010 (Public Law 111-148), requires the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to publish a core set of voluntary health quality measures for Medicaid-eligible adults. The measures, which will be reported annually, will provide insight into the quality of health care provided to the Medicaid adult population. This work is being carried out as a collaboration between the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

In order to utilize a process that included multi-stakeholder expert review, AHRQ's National Advisory Council created a Subcommittee in the fall of 2010 to evaluate and recommend measures for the core set. A total of 51 measures were recommended and posted for public comment on December 30, 2010. Information on the Subcommittee's preliminary work leading to the measures posted for public comment was detailed previously.³

This report describes public comment results and documents the process and deliberations of the Subcommittee in developing final recommendations for the core set. In addition, the report describes gap areas that the Subcommittee recommended for further research and development of quality measures.

^3. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality National Advisory Council Subcommittee: Identifying Quality Measures for Medicaid-Eligible Adults: Background Report. December 2010.