The 2009 CHIP Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) introduced a number of useful tools and incentives to advance and improve children’s health coverage including the development of a standardized set of children’s health quality measures. Last fall, while we were all engrossed in the rollout of the health insurance marketplaces, HHS released the 2013 Annual Report on the Quality of Care for Children in Medicaid and CHIP. I scanned the report recently but was even more intrigued after Eliot Fishman, head of the children and adults program groups at CMS, presented some of the data at CCF’s annual conference.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the uptick in state reporting, particularly considering that it is voluntary. The median number of measures reported by states stands at 14 of the 22 measures. Two states – Tennessee and Florida – are reporting all 22 measures, and all states are reporting the two dental measures. Well child visits and access to primary care practitioners are among the other measures reported by a majority of states.

Because kids are relatively “cheap” to cover, they aren’t the first focus of quality studies and improvement efforts designed to achieve savings in health care costs. So the fact that more states are measuring and reporting the CHIPRA quality standards is good news in and of itself. But what’s really exciting is how we can use the data to identify high achieving states and apply lessons learned to help drive quality improvements throughout the country.

Medicaid and CHIP cover more than one third of U.S. children, so these programs offer a great laboratory for collecting and refining quality indicators, in addition to collaborating on improvement projects. While advancing the quality of children’s health care may not result in the big dollar savings that can be achieved by focusing on the chronic diseases that plague the adult population, there are many good reasons to improve the quality of care and health outcomes for children. Health, school performance and success in life, both in childhood and beyond, are inextricably linked to quality care. As one study coined it “children’s health, our nation’s wealth.”

There are some surprises in the report, but we’ll save those for future blogs as my colleagues and I drill down to some of the specifics.