NCQA Wins $18M CMS Office of Minority Health Contract

What You Should Know: 

– NCQA announced that it has been awarded a $18M, maximum 5-year contract from the CMS Office of Minority Health to advance health equity and reduce health disparities.

The project, called the Health Equity Accelerator builds on NCQA’s strong foundation of work at the intersection of health equity, health care quality and health outcomes research, as well as NCQA’s longstanding relationship with CMS OMH. NCQA previously supported CMS OMH as the prime contractor for the Health Equity Innovation Incubator, which ran from 2016 to 2021. NCQA also partnered with RAND on that program.

Health Equity Accelerator Focus Areas

The contract’s major tasks and areas of focus are:

• Reducing Disparities and Improving Access and Quality, including the assessment of social drivers of health related to unplanned 30-day hospital readmissions, chronic kidney disease (CKD), end-stage renal disease (ESRD), chronic health conditions and preventive services, and chronic and potentially disabling conditions.
• Reducing Disparities in Mental and Behavioral Health, including analysis of mental and behavioral health disparities, as well as long-COVID’s impact on mental and behavioral health.
• Data-Driven Evidence to Support Policy and Operations, including the improvement and streamlining of health equity-related data elements, studying the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms on health equity and supporting CMS’ Health Equity Data Workgroup (HEDWG).
• Health Equity Methodologies and Measures, including developing and evolving the Health Equity Summary Score and looking ahead on health equity measurement topics.

“CMS has articulated a clear vision to advance health equity and ensure our health care system helps everyone achieve their best possible health. The Health Equity Accelerator is designed to put that vision into practice,” said Rachel Harrington, NCQA Senior Research Scientist for Health Equity and Project Director. “Our team is deeply excited to begin putting our technical and subject matter expertise to work on these tasks.”

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