New Medicaid and CHIP Scorecard Increases Program Transparency to Drive Improvements

Mathematica’s health experts assisted the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in creating its new 2023 Medicaid & Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Scorecard, which provides a clear look at agency and state-reported data to improve transparency about the administration and outcomes of these programs.

“The Medicaid and CHIP (MAC) Scorecard initiative is the culmination of a CMS goal to increase public transparency about these important programs’ operations and outcomes,” said Carey Appold, vice president of federal Medicaid at Mathematica. “Ideally, states and CMS can use the MAC Scorecard to drive improvements.”

The MAC Scorecard, which is available at Medicaid.gov, draws on more than 30 data sets derived from state and federal reporting efforts. The measures selected for inclusion in the MAC Scorecard represent key data points that reflect CMS’s priorities across various facets of Medicaid and CHIP. Mathematica supported the agency’s initiative by providing subject matter, technical, and data visualization expertise to help CMS consider different ways of displaying data on health care quality and federal and state accountability for Medicaid and CHIP. Together, these programs serve more than 75 million people.

Mathematica worked with CMS to conduct interviews and focus groups with more than 100 participants to identify opportunities to improve the MAC Scorecard. These participants represented a range of MAC Scorecard users, including Medicaid research, advocacy, and policy professionals. CMS also collaborated with an advisory group comprising members of the National Association of Medicaid Directors to collect feedback directly from Medicaid program leaders and staff.

Mathematica supported the redesign of the scorecard web application, which enables users to do the following:

• Search for measures by name, keywords, or category
• View summary-level and detailed information about each measure
• Download measure information into files and export it into images
• View and interact with data in a variety of ways, including sortable bar graphs, line graphs, tables, and maps
• View data for certain measures across a period of time (months, quarters, or years) and at the national and state level

“Over the next year, Mathematica looks forward to supporting CMS in its work with states and other key partners to enhance the MAC Scorecard,” added Appold. “As more data become available, we will support CMS decision making around enhancements that continue to break down the complexity and further public understanding of the Medicaid program.”