By Maya Goldman
Source: Axios
Photo / Image Source: Unsplash,
Progress on many key health care quality measures was reversed during the first two years of the pandemic, according to a new comprehensive federal review.
Why it matters: The report identified a "significant worsening" of patient safety measures and "persistent" health equity gaps for historically disadvantaged patients as COVID-19 overwhelmed the health care system.
Context: The federal government asks providers to report on a wide set of several hundred measures meant to assess health care quality.
Before the pandemic, from 2016 to 2019, providers' performance on more than half of quality metrics improved, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said.
CMS relaxed reporting requirements when the pandemic hit, but the agency said it continued to collect enough data to compare performance with long-term trends.
Zoom in: Performance on 38% of measures came in worse than expected in 2020, and 47% worse in 2021, CMS said.
About half of safety measures came in worse than expected in those two years.
In the starkest example, a measure of central line-associated bloodstream infections was 94% worse than expected in 2021.
Quality scores decreased more significantly for minority populations on some measures.
For instance, osteoporosis management for Black Medicare Advantage enrollees was 22.4 percentage points worse in 2021, while it fell 14.4 percentage points for white enrollees.
The bottom line: CMS said the data and feedback from focus groups show the need to develop measures that "address bias in care delivery and deficits in cultural competency, unmet health-related social needs, access, and health literacy."
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