Improving data is key to improving health equity, LaShawn McIver, MD, director of the CMS Office of Minority Health, wrote in a Nov. 10 blog post.
“Data can tell a story, but if the data is incomplete or unaligned, the story is also incomplete,” Dr. McIver wrote. “To work to advance health equity, we must improve our data, especially our health equity data.”
Here are four key takeaways from the agency’s message:
- The agency has taken initial steps to improve data collection, including adding data collection to Medicare Advantage enrollment forms and adding standardized data collection for post-acute care.
- Challenges still persist in CMS’ data collection, including incomplete and inconsistent data.
- To resolve some of these issues, the agency plans to align more of its data collection with the United States Core Data for Interoperability standards.
- The agency also plans to collect new health equity data elements across programs and implement health equity scores.
