CHCS Reports on Effort to Boost Quality Among Medicaid Managed Care Plans

The Center for Health Care Strategies this month reported on its five-year, $3.8 million initiative that brings officials from various plans together to discuss common problems and brainstorm possible solutions in an effort to help "enhance" the quality of Medicaid managed care plans. Called the Best Clinical and Administrative Practices (BCAP) program, the project developed from a series of telephone interviews conducted by CHCS with chief medical officers and quality improvement directors from Medicaid managed care plans in 10 states. The interviews revealed that many of the plans faced "common hurdles," including the failure to obtain relevant data, difficulty reaching members, patient and staff turnover, "disjointed" delivery systems and the "absence of identifiable accepted performance benchmarks." Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the BCAP project aims to bring officials from different Medicaid plans together to "shar[e] their own plan's successes and challenges, bounc[e] ideas off each other and identif[y] pilot activities for their own markets." Dr. Richard Baron, senior medical consultant to CHCS, said of the new program, "Most Medicaid plans are involved in quality improvement activities at some level, but their knowledge of what is going on elsewhere may not extend beyond their own markets. Through BCAP we're working with health plan leadership to gather, refine and disseminate plans' collective expertise." After gaining an idea of the successes and failures of the programs, officials from the different plans convene to share their experiences (CHCS brief, May 2001). To view the full CHCS report, click here.