Quality Counts for Kids Initiative - Introduction

Consistent delivery of child health preventive services is an essential first step to building a healthy future for Maine. At the same time, there is strong evidence that there are barriers preventing children enrolled in Maine’s Medicaid program (MaineCare) from receiving adequate levels of evidence-based preventive services. To help address these significant gaps in care, Quality Counts on behalf of the Improving Outcome for Children (IHOC) Program and MaineCare is introducing the “First STEPS (Strengthening Together Early Preventive Services) Learning Initiative,” a comprehensive effort to provide outreach, education, and quality improvement support to primary care practices to improve rates of Early, Periodic,  Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment (EPSDT) services. In direct alignment with the Maine Patient Centered Medical Home’s work to transform practice and to provide care that is “accessible, continuous, comprehensive, family centered, coordinated, compassionate, and culturally effective,” First STEPS offers an exciting and promising approach to improve preventive services for children in Maine.

The initiative will be conducted over 2 years and will work with 10-20 pediatric and family medicine practices from across the state to implement the First STEPS learning initiative components beginning in September, 2011. Maintenance of Certification is available to those providers meeting the eligibility requirements (see below). We will evaluate the initiative using a comprehensive approach that includes nationally recognized measures of quality related to well visit and screening rates. The first 8 months of the project will be to implement the AAP Bright Futures office system approach and work to improve immunizations rates. There is a high interest in the state of Maine on improving immunization rates with a new universal coverage law going into effect in 2011. Last year, the state immunization program, ImmPact2, did a pilot with one practice that took care of a high volume of children with Medicaid (>4000 patients) and within 8 months raised 2 year old immunization rates from 16% to over 80%. We will be applying lessons learned from that pilot as well as will work with practices on implementing the CDC Best Practice bundle for immunizations. The mission of the First STEPS Learning Initiative is to improve preventive service, including raising immunization rates, for children in Maine.