DHCS 2022 Comprehensive Quality Strategy

Manifest MedEx (MX) appreciates the opportunity to comment on DHCS’ draft 2022 Comprehensive Quality Strategy (CQS) report. We are a statewide, nonprofit health information exchange (HIE) that connects health records for 29 million people among over 400 organizations that care for them, including six Medi-Cal managed care plans. Through our mission and capabilities, we are determined to help DHCS meet the goal expressed in the CQS of “using actionable data to identify gaps in quality and health equity and informing improvement efforts” (p. 78).

We applaud the ambition reflected in this draft CQS, much of which is also embodied in the corresponding rollout of the CalAIM initiative, managed care procurement, and updated Medi-Cal plan contract. We also recognize the CQS is intended to provide an overarching strategy to support DHCS’ ten-year vision as opposed to a detailed implementation toolkit. That said, the draft report acknowledges “there are a number of known…gaps, including ensuring that DHCS policies…[support] plan and provider capacity to identify and address disparities and to implement care delivery models that advance high-quality, efficient and equitable care for Medi-Cal members.” (p. 77)

The final version of the CQS need not exhaustively catalog such barriers. It should, however, identify the most urgent and pervasive examples so that DHCS and stakeholders may begin to collaborate on ways to overcome them.

Read all of MX’s comments in the full letter here.