Using Medicaid and CHIP Claims Data to Support Pediatric Quality Measurement: Lessons From 3 Centers of Excellence in Measure Development

ObjectiveWe sought to explore the claims data-related issues relevant to quality measure development for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), illustrating the challenges encountered and solutions developed around 3 distinct performance measure topics: care coordination for children with complex needs, quality of care for high-prevalence conditions, and hospital readmissions.MethodsEach of 3 centers of excellence presents an example that illustrates the challenges of using claims data for quality measurement.ResultsOur Centers of Excellence in pediatric quality measurement used innovative methods to develop algorithms that use Medicaid claims data to identify children with complex needs; overcome some shortcomings of existing data for measuring quality of care for common conditions such as otitis media; and identify readmissions after hospitalizations for lower respiratory infections.ConclusionsOur experience constructing quality measure specifications using claims data suggests that it will be challenging to measure key quality of care constructs for Medicaid-insured children at a national level in a timely and consistent way. Without better data to underpin pediatric quality measurement, Medicaid and CHIP will have difficulty using some existing measures for accountability, value-based purchasing, and quality improvement both across states and within states.