HJAR Mar/Apr 2022

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS I  MAR / APR 2022 47 of nearly 20 percentage points in the rate of individuals who received a timely follow- up visit after being hospitalized for a mental illness. We expect the insurance carriers to use these data to identify areas where they’re behind and develop strategies — incentives, member education, provider rewards, or something else — to push for better care for ARHOME members. We’ll also use the quality measures to ad- dress other health disparities. We’ll be cal- culating and analyzing differences in care between rural and urban areas of our state to help us better understand differences in the care our members receive based on where they live. In 2020, our urban centers outper- formed the rural areas on some measures, such as in medication management among individuals with asthma. But in many cases, our rural areas appear to be providing mem- bers with better results. For example, rural areas have higher rates of timely follow-up visits after an ER visit for a mental illness and higher rates of medication adherence among individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia. These new data will help us understand those Nell Smith Assistant Director Division of Medical Services differences and what the private health plans can do to address them. TheARHOME programwill also examine racial disparities in the care provided to our members. The 2020 quality measures re- vealed higher rates of preventive screenings among Black members than among White members, but White members had higher rates of timely follow-up visits after hospital- ization for a mental illness and lower hospital admission rates for select chronic conditions. In December, the advisory panel members met to help finalize the targets the health plans will be expected to meet in 2022. All health plans, for example, will need to en- sure that at least 54% of their eligible female members above age 50 get a mammogram in 2022 or the plans will face a penalty. Each measure’s target was established at the lev- el of the highest performing plan for that measure, based on the 2019 and 2020 data, with the idea that all plans can and should be achieving at the level of the highest per- former. That means a plan might be the leader in some measures, while requiring significant improvement in others. Setting the targets this way allows the plans to focus their improvement strategies on the areas where they are weakest and encourages the highest performance from among all plans. Assessing healthcare quality against the tar- gets will encourage the plans to experiment with strategies for improving care and de- termine how well those strategies work. The lessons learned will allow carriers to roll out proven ARHOME initiatives to their com- mercial populations, leading to better care across the state. n REFERENCE Under the 2022 Federal Guidelines, household in- come must be less than $18,754 for a single indi- vidual or $31,781 for a family of three. Nell Smith has two master’s degrees — one in jour- nalism and the other in public health. She combined those interests at the start of her career,working as a journalist covering healthcare for newspapers in Illinois and Arkansas. She then worked as a researcher and administrator for the policy analysis and research sec- tion of the Arkansas Bureau of Legislative Research, which serves as non-partisan staff for the Arkansas General Assembly. She has worked at the Arkansas Department of Health and now atArkansas DHS.She’s excited to be part of ensuring all Arkansans have ac- cess to quality healthcare.