CMS Innovation Center Health Care Innovation Awards: Evaluation Plan.

Area of Science:

• Health Services Research
• Health Policy
• Program Evaluation

Background:

• The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMS) funded 108 Health Care Innovation Awards to test new models for service delivery and payment.
• These models aim to improve health, healthcare quality, and reduce costs for Medicare, Medicaid, and Children's Health Insurance Program beneficiaries.
• The initiative also focuses on understanding impacts on vulnerable subpopulations and exploring workforce development and sustainable models.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe a strategy for evaluating the results of the Health Care Innovation Awards.
• To develop standardized evaluation approaches for rapid and comparable assessment across diverse awardees.
• To identify strategies for widespread adoption to lower healthcare costs and improve care quality.

Main Methods:

• The evaluation design employs a multi-level data collection and analysis approach: individual awardee, awardee grouping, and summary evaluation.
• Key evaluation dimensions include implementation and program effectiveness, workforce considerations, impact on priority populations, and contextual factors.
• Standardized approaches are developed to answer key questions across similar awardee groups.

Main Results:

• The evaluation framework is designed to provide comparable assessments across 108 Health Care Innovation Awards.
• It allows for analysis of effectiveness, impact on specific beneficiary groups (e.g., dual eligibles, complex patients), and workforce implications.
• The strategy facilitates the identification of successful models for broader implementation.

Conclusions:

• A standardized, multi-level evaluation strategy is crucial for assessing the effectiveness and impact of health care innovation initiatives.
• This approach enables the identification of scalable models that improve care quality, reduce costs, and benefit priority populations.
• The findings aim to inform policy and practice for widespread adoption of successful healthcare delivery and payment reforms.