Medicaid update – impressive quality dashboard demo

At Friday’s Medicaid Council meeting, DSS demonstrated their upcoming HUSKY Health Data Dashboard. When it goes live the dashboard will give visitors drill-down access to a wealth of quality and access data across the program including outcomes, member and provider experience, provider enrollment, spending and utilization, as well as special projects. All Medicaid services will be included in the dashboard – medical, behavioral health, dental, non-emergency transportation, pharmacy, and long term services and supports. Because the state no longer fragments the program among managed care organizations, we avoid all those apples-to-oranges disclaimers that kept policymakers in the dark for over a decade. The data will be available in pre-set charts as well as downloadable aggregate data. I am particularly interested in the ability to parse spending increases by category of service and price vs. utilization influences. There were objections to a suggestion that providers receive identifiable information on Medicaid members not affiliated with a provider for outreach purposes. While we acknowledge the benefits of encouraging connections to the health system, release of identifiable data raises concerns of adverse selection, especially given DSS’s controversial plan to introduce provider risk into the program a year from now.