Though Medicaid is one of the largest payers in the nation, its administrators are not using patient data to help run the program more efficiently, writes Medicaid Health Plans of America CEO Jeff Myers in an op-ed for The Hill.
Because Medicaid is a federal-state partnership, every state program manages their data differently. This makes it difficult for a centralized actor to analyze. Funding cuts have also made it difficult for states to invest in IT systems that would allow them to perform such analyses.
However, Mr. Myers believes Medicaid's transition to care management plans will lead to more extensive data collection. The trick, he writes, is getting different levels of government to coordinate their efforts and create a standard platform where they can upload and analyze data.
"Leveraging the knowledge of health plans can set us sailing toward the New World where quality Medicaid data bring to life increased health outcomes," Mr. Myers wrote in The Hill. "Rather than one more required data set creation, now is the time to rethink what already exists with an eye towards wringing inefficiency out of our current data collection efforts and to leverage the power of the health plans."