In 2013, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), in close collaboration with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), implemented a process for considering potential retirement of CMS-selected measures in the initial Child Core Set (CCS) identified in 2009. The initial CCS was required by the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) of 2009.1,2 The initial CCS, consisting of 24 quality measures, was to be used voluntarily by State Medicaid and CHIP programs, who were encouraged to provide resulting data to CMS. In turn, CMS used the State-level data to develop CHIPRA-required reports to Congress.3 Besides reporting, State Medicaid and CHIP programs could use the data to target specific quality improvement efforts to reduce gaps in quality.
In addition to the 2009 identification of an initial CCS, CHIPRA required the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to post improvements to the CCS annually beginning in January 2013. The January 2013 improvements were informed by deliberations of a 2012 National Advisory Council on Healthcare Research and Quality Subcommittee on Quality Measures for Children’s Healthcare (SNAC).4,5 The 2013 work was intended to contribute to improvements to be posted by January 2014.6
