State at a Glance: South Carolina
South Carolina is featured in the following reports from the National Evaluation:
- Evaluation Highlight No. 2: How are States and evaluators measuring medical homeness in the CHIPRA Quality Demonstration Grant Program?
- Evaluation Highlight No. 5: How are CHIPRA Quality Demonstration States encouraging health care providers to put quality measures to work?
- Article: Nine States' Use of Collaboratives to Improve Children's Health Care Quality in Medicaid and CHIP
- Article: Associations Between Practice-Reported Medical Homeness and Health Care Utilization Among Publicly Insured Children
Learn more about South Carolina's CHIPRA quality demonstration projects on this page:
Overview
As one of the 10 grantees, South Carolina is implementing projects in three of the five grant categories:
- Showing how a core set of children's quality measures can be used to improve quality of care for children.
- Promoting the use of health information technology (IT) to enhance service quality and care coordination.
- Implementing more comprehensive provider‐based models of service delivery.
South Carolina's Objectives
South Carolina will (1) test the initial core set of children's quality measures; (2) use health IT to automate quality reporting and feedback and improve care coordination; and (3) use a learning collaborative approach to implement a medical home model with a behavioral health focus. Activities under each category will occur in 18 pilot practices. The practices include 12 pediatric practices, three academic practices, and three federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), representing small, medium, and large practices located in rural and urban settings across the State. The practices intend to implement electronic health records (EHR). They plan to receive quality data reports and to be able to extract, standardize, and transmit data from their EHR to the State's health information exchange (HIE). By the grant's completion, most of the practices should have the ability to obtain medical home certification from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).
Working with the Initial Core Set of Children's Quality Measures
South Carolina will automate the collection and reporting of the initial core set of children's quality measures in 18 pilot pediatric practices. By examining the ease of measuring the indicators and their impact on quality improvement, South Carolina will suggest strategies for statewide reporting of quality data and the use of such data in broader quality improvement efforts. The project will use a learning collaborative approach and will focus on the collection of quality measures, quality report feedback and review, and quality report consultation.
Using Health IT to Improve Child Health Care Quality
Leveraging other HIE statewide infrastructure investments, Regional Extension Center EHR adoption support, and health IT adoption incentives, South Carolina will support the 18 practices so they can collect, submit, and receive feedback on quality measures electronically and deliver coordinated care through a "connected" health care system.
Assessing a Provider-Based Model of Care
South Carolina will transform pediatric practices into patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs) that effectively integrate physical and mental health services. By the end of 2013, the grant had four practices who were PCMH recognized and 10 others working on the application. The State will use a learning collaborative model that involves semiannual meetings, technical assistance, coaching, site visits, the Plan-Do-Study-Act Cycle, and a project blog for sharing information.
Evaluation Questions
The national evaluation team will gather information from South Carolina to address a wide range of
questions about the implementation and outcomes of its efforts, including:
- How did South Carolina automate the reporting of clinical data to a new database and transmit
feedback to providers through EHRs? - To what extent did previous knowledge, skills, or experience related to using health IT to
improve delivery of care provide support for the current project? - To what extent did the medical home model succeed in effectively integrating physical and
mental health services? - What are the key lessons from South Carolina's experience that would be useful for other
States?
Learn More
This information is current as of February 2014, slightly more than 4 years after the grant award. To learn more about the projects being implemented in South Carolina under the CHIPRA Quality Demonstration Grant Program visit their Web site at https://www.scdhhs.gov/service/chipra or please contact:
Lynn Martin, Project Manager,
South Carolina CHIPRA Grant
PO Box 8206, 1801 Main Street,
Columbia, SC 29202‐8206
803-898-0093
MartinLy@scdhhs.gov
