CMS Releases Mapping Tool to Show Medicare Disparities

WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 24, 2016)—The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Office of Minority Health (CMS OMH) released a new interactive map to increase understanding of geographic disparities in chronic disease among Medicare beneficiaries. The Mapping Medicare Disparities (MMD) Tool identifies disparities in health outcomes, utilization, and spending by race and ethnicity and geographic location. Understanding geographic differences in disparities is important to informing policy decisions and efficiently targeting populations and geographies for interventions.

“Our commitment to health equity begins with properly measuring the care people get and having an honest dialogue on how and where we need to improve,” said CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt. “Today’s tool aims to make it harder for disparities to go unaddressed.”

Racial and ethnic minorities experience disproportionately high rates of chronic diseases, and are more likely to experience difficulty accessing high quality of care than other individuals. The identification of areas with large differences in the proportions of Medicare beneficiaries with chronic diseases is an important step for informing and planning health equity activities and initiatives. The Mapping Medicare Disparities Tool features:

• A dynamic interface with data on the prevalence of 18 chronic conditions, end stage renal disease, or a disability; Medicare spending, hospital and emergency department (ED) utilization, preventable hospitalizations, readmissions, and mortality rates.
• The ability to sort by state or county of residence, sex, age, dual-eligibility for Medicare and Medicaid, and race and ethnicity.
• Built-in benchmarking features to investigate disparities within counties and across racial and ethnic groups, and within racial and ethnic groups across counties.

“It’s not enough to improve average health care quality in the U.S.,” said CMS OMH Director Cara James. “As the CMS Equity Plan lays out, we must identify gaps in quality of care at all levels of the health care system to address disparities. We are excited to share this new tool, which allows us to pinpoint disparities in health care outcomes by population and condition.”

The MMD Tool was developed in collaboration with KPMG LLC and NORC at the University of Chicago as part of the CMS Equity Plan for Improving Quality in Medicare. The plan provides a framework for advancing health equity by improving the quality of care provided to minority and other underserved Medicare beneficiaries. MMD Tool

To access the MMD tool, visit this link.

To learn more about how to use the tool and its data sources, see the MMD Tool Overview. Further details are available in the MMD Tool Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), the Quick Start Guide, and the MMD Tool Technical Documentation.