Insurance Marketplaces That Promote Quality Improvement
In 2014, most state-run health insurance marketplaces focused on enrolling millions of people in new coverage. While enrollment will continue to be a challenge next year, ongoing operational improvements will enable the marketplaces to better focus on encouraging the delivery of higher-quality, more cost-effective care. <br /><br />
In a <a href="/blog/2014/next-frontier-insurance-marketplaces-promote-quality-improvement">new blog post,</a> Sabrina Corlette of the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms and Sarah Dash of the Alliance for Health Reform review the findings of their Commonwealth Fund brief assessing efforts among the state-based health insurance marketplaces to implement the Affordable Care Act’s quality improvement initiatives. They found that 13 marketplaces moved forward this year with at least one of the ACA's quality-related provisions, such as collecting performance data or making such information public. Still, the authors say, these efforts may not have much of an effect on plan performance until consumers are able to compare and choose plans based on quality, or the marketplaces include only the highest-quality plans.<br />
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