State at a Glance: Utah
Utah 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. 3: How are CHIPRA Quality Demonstration States working to improve adolescent health care?
- Evaluation Highlight No. 6: How are CHIPRA quality demonstration States working together to improve the quality of health care for children?
- Evaluation Highlight No. 7: How are CHIPRA quality demonstration States designing and implementing caregiver peer support programs?
- Evaluation Highlight No. 9: How are CHIPRA quality demonstration States supporting the use of care coordinators?
- Evaluation Highlight No. 13: How did CHIPRA quality demonstration States employ learning collaboratives to improve children’s health care quality?
- Article: Nine States’ Use of Collaboratives to Improve Children’s Health Care Quality in Medicaid and CHIP
Learn more about Utah’s CHIPRA quality demonstration projects on this page:
Overview
As one of the 10 grantees, Utah is working with its partner Idaho to implement projects in three of the five grant categories:
- Promoting the use of health information technology (IT) to enhance service quality and care coordination.
- Implementing a more comprehensive provider-based model of service delivery.
- Testing an approach to quality improvement of a State's own design.
Utah's Objectives
Utah is working to improve quality of care for all children, with particular emphasis on children with special health care needs (CSHCN). Under the demonstration, Utah will: (1) implement a strategy to improve the child health IT infrastructure in the State, (2) help practices transform into medical homes, and (3) foster collaboration among child-serving practices engaged in quality improvement activities.
Using Health IT to Improve Child Health Care Quality
Utah is implementing a multifaceted health IT strategy aimed at improving quality measurement and enhancing care coordination. As part of the strategy, Utah will:
- Develop and pilot the Pediatric Patient Summary, a secure, Web-based application that summarizes clinical and other relevant information about individual children with complex conditions. The application is populated by the child’s primary care clinician and parents have access to the application and can share information with other providers, such as emergency departments and new specialists.
- Improve the Medical Home Portal, an online resource for clinicians and families that provides information on caring for children with chronic conditions and about local professional and community services and other resources for CSHCN.
- Expand the Utah Department of Health's data integration effort by (1) linking child health information in the Child Health Advanced Records Management (CHARM) system and the Newborn Screening Program database and (2) creating interfaces between Utah and Idaho immunization registries.
- Help practices access the EHR at the region’s sole pediatric tertiary facility and the EHR’s secure communication tool, the Message Log.
Additionally, the Utah Pediatric Partnership to Improve Healthcare Quality (UPIQ) is developing a Web-based quality improvement project management, data collection and analysis platform called QI TeamSpace. It is currently being used by improvement partnerships in five States.
Assessing a Provider-Based Model of Care
Utah is working with nine pediatric primary care practices and three subspecialty practices to support them in becoming effective medical home teams and in providing high-quality and coordinated care in partnership with patients and families, with particular focus on CSHCN. Participating practices each have a medical home coordinator, employed by the practice and partially funded by the CHIPRA grant, who participates in learning collaborative sessions, leads quality improvement projects, and supports patient-centered medical home (PCMH) transformation. The practices participate in annual learning collaboratives focused on medical home topics including chronic condition management.
Testing an Approach to Quality improvement of Utah's Own Design
UPIQ continues its long tradition of engaging pediatric and family medicine practices throughout Utah in quality improvement learning collaboratives targeting various topics including PCMH; care plans; mental health; asthma care management; pediatric transitions; and toxic stress, child abuse, and foster care. UPIQ is a founding member of the National Improvement Partnership Network (NIPN) and works with NIPN leadership to support development of new improvement partnerships (IPs) and in developing standard measures for use in quality improvement projects among the 20 States with IPs. Utah is also holding cross-State collaborative meetings with the Idaho Health and Wellness Collaborative for Children, Idaho's IP, on several topics, including care coordination in rural areas and resolving the challenges of collecting the core set of children's quality measures.
Evaluation Questions
The national evaluation team will gather information from Utah to address a wide range of questions about the implementation and outcomes of its efforts, including:
- How were cross-State connections developed between the Utah and Idaho HIEs?
- Did the Utah medical home project enhance quality of care for children?
- To what extent did the cross-State Utah and Idaho improvement partnerships enhance quality of care for the region's children?
- What are the key lessons from Utah'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 that are being implemented in Utah under the CHIPRA Quality Demonstration Grant Program, please contact:
Julie Olsen
Utah Department of Health
Division of Medicaid and Health Financing
PO Box 143108, Salt Lake City, UT 84114-3108
801-538-6097
julieo@utah.gov
