$13.4 million awarded to test new children’s quality measures

Six grantees will receive a total $13.4 million in federal funding over four years to test and implement new pediatric quality measures.

Announced by CMS and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the measures follow up on 2011 quality grants first established by Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA). The goal then was to develop measures which emphasized “increasing the portfolio of evidence-based, consensus pediatric quality measures available to public and private purchasers of children’s healthcare services.”

The new grants, with funding provided by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), will put those measures to the test in real care settings.

“The PQMP Centers of Excellence provided us with valid measures of children’s health care quality. This next step of research will help us test these measures in real-world settings,” said AHRQ Director Andy Bindman, MD. “The ultimate goal is to improve children’s health through better healthcare, at lower costs, at both the federal and state level.”

The grantees include some of the same principal investigators as the first phase, including Gary Freed, MD, MPH, of the University of Michigan, Rita Mangione-Smith, MD, MPH, of Seattle Children’s Hospital, and Sarah Hudson Scholle, DrPH, vice president of the National Committee for Quality Assurance.