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Dashboard identifies opportunities to improve care for beneficiaries with multiple chronic conditions
Last Thursday, CMS Acting Administrator Marilyn Tavenner announced the launch of a new Medicare Chronic Conditions Dashboard. The dashboard furthers the Affordable Care Act’s goals for health promotion and the prevention and management of multiple chronic conditions. It will give researchers, physicians, public health professionals, and policymakers a tool to get current data on where multiple chronic conditions occur, which services they require, and how much Medicare spends helping beneficiaries with multiple chronic conditions.
The dashboard is part of an HHS initiative on Multiple Chronic Conditions. The Multiple Chronic Conditions: A Strategic Framework was developed to serve as a national roadmap for HHS as well as public and private stakeholders to use to coordinate and improve the health of beneficiaries with multiple chronic conditions.
“More than two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaries have multiple chronic diseases such as heart disease and diabetes, and that number will rise with an aging population,” said Acting Administrator Tavenner. “The Affordable Care Act addresses these health problems by making people with Medicare eligible for recommended preventive care without Part B deductibles or copayments. The health care law also promotes better health care coordination and management of chronic conditions through analysis of current data.”
“The Dashboard is a major step forward to help people living with multiple chronic conditions,” said Assistant Secretary for Health Howard K. Koh, MD, MPH. “This web-based tool provides new and critical data that can help us develop better patient-centered approaches to improve health outcomes, lower costs, and maximize quality of life.”
According to the CMS press releaese spending for Medicare beneficiaries with two or more chronic conditions represented 93% of all Medicare spending in 2011, about $276 billion. The analytics captured in the dashboard will help support policies to slow the growth in costs for beneficiaries with multiple chronic conditions as users find, analyze, and apply summarized data from CMS’ Chronic Conditions Data Warehouse. Understanding overlapping medical conditions related to patient health will help identify common concurrent conditions and areas where prevention and treatment can improve care and lower costs.
Learn more or access the CMS’s Medicare Chronic Conditions Dashboard here.