The federal government needs to do a better job of evaluating Medicaid demonstration programs, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Demonstration programs, on which the federal government spends more than $300 billion a year, exempt states from selected federal Medicaid requirements and regulations so they can test new approaches to providing and paying for care for their Medicaid population. As part of waiving these requirements, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services requires the states to perform or commission evaluations of the effectiveness of those new approaches.
According to a new GAO study, however, those reports are not always performed in a timely manner, are sometimes too limited in scope, and their results are not sufficiently publicized so that others may learn lessons from the demonstration. The GAO recommended that CMS establish written procedures for such matter and CMS agreed with this recommendation.
Learn more about the GAO’s review of Medicaid demonstration program evaluations in the GAO report Medicaid Demonstrations: Evaluations Yielded Limited Results, Underscoring Need for Changes to Federal Policies and Procedures, which can be found here.