New York, NY, May 19, 2011 The Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) legislation required a core set of recommended health care quality measures to be identified for voluntary use by State Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Programs (CHIP), which together cover almost 40 million American children and adolescents. In a special Supplement to Academic Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Pediatric Association, noted authorities present critical insights into the issues surrounding the initial core set and key concepts for improving children's health care.
Peter Szilagyi, MD, MPH, University of Rochester School of Medicine, and Editor-in-Chief of Academic Pediatrics observed, "A well-known and insightful phrase in health care is 'what gets measured, gets done.' Although this is not always the case, without metrics we cannot tell if our health care system is performing well. These CHIPRA quality measures will provide an excellent set of metrics to judge the quality of care for our nation's children, and to use as a blueprint for improvement."
The set of articles in this supplement includes a detailed description of how the identification of a balanced and grounded set of children's health care quality measures was accomplished by means of an open, public process combined with an evidence-informed evaluation methodology.
In the introductory article, "The Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act Quality Measures Initiatives: Moving Forward to Improve Measurement, Care, and Child and Adolescent Outcomes," Denise Dougherty, PhD, Senior Advisor, Child Health and Quality Improvement, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD, and co-authors describe the current environment in children's health care, noting that children make up 26% of the nation's population and account for 1 in 6 health care dollars, yet only receive 47% of the recommended clinical care. They com
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| Contact: Pat Hogan p.hogan@elsevier.com 212-633-3944 Elsevier Health Sciences Source:Eurekalert |