Dual Medicare-Medicaid coverage is essential for this highly disadvantaged population to receive the medical care and social supports they need. The Measure Applications Partnership recently issued a new report and recommendations on improving care for dual eligible Americans to the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid (CMS). Better healthcare, care coordination and supportive services for dual eligible beneficiaries have the potential to make significant differences both in their health and quality-of-life. Improvements for this population also have the potential address the disproportionate cost of their care. Annual Medicare and Medicaid spending for dual eligible beneficiaries is approximately double the expenditures for beneficiaries of just one of these programs, totaling $250 billion in 2009.

MAP builds upon its previous work in this report by updating and providing the best available family of measures for dual eligible beneficiaries, describing persistent measure gaps, exploring strategies to improve health-related quality of life, and outling an initial approach to gather feedback from stakeholders across the field using the measures to inform MAP’s future recommendations to CMS about this vulnerable population.

In this recent work, MAP underscored that quality measurement is an essential catalyst to stimulate needed improvements and that the alignment of measures—not only across federal programs but also with the private sector—is critical for efficient use of resources and to reduce the burden of reporting on duplicative requirements. Similarly, stakeholders need to be able to identify and apply those measures that will have the most impact to drive improvement in healthcare delivery.

Contact
measureapplications@qualityforum.org