Closing Quality Data Gaps: Roadmap and Report

By Amanda Clarke, Vice President of Programs,
California Health Care Safety Net Institute

 

One of the greatest barriers to improving patient care occurs when California’s public health care systems and Medi-Cal managed care plans lack access to quality data—data that is essential to understanding their shared patients’ needs.

However, when systems and plans exchange and align their patient-level data, they can close gaps and jointly implement strategies to deliver higher-quality, more coordinated care.

Recognizing that data alignment and close collaboration are foundational to achieving these outcomes, SNI and the Local Health Plans of California (LHPC) Institute have convened nearly 100 system and plan leaders twice over the past year to learn from experts and each other about this critical issue.

How to start collaborating

Drawing from these convenings and the experiences of four regional partnerships that have made measurable progress, SNI developed two new resources for systems and plans beginning to tackle data exchange and alignment:

  • Data alignment roadmap outlines the process—and best practices—for systems and plans to compare and align their quality data.
  • Data alignment report shares findings from the four regional collaborations, so systems and plans can learn from their challenges and successes.

Case study, reference guide, and Q&A

Since launching our program to support greater collaboration between systems and plans in 2024, SNI and the LHPC Institute have also developed the following related content:

  • Case study on how Riverside University Health System (RUHS) and Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP) aligned their data and collaborated closely to achieve remarkable improvements in patient care outcomes.
  • Reference guide highlighting examples of system-plan collaboration, the external drivers that impact systems and plans, and their overlapping quality measures.
  • Q&A with SNI’s Executive Director Giovanna Giuliani and LHPC’s CEO Linnea Koopmans discussing the work ahead as systems and plans learn about each other’s challenges and priorities. Giuliani and Koopmans also explore what is at risk if they do not collaborate and the potential benefits for patients when they do.