Wakefield to Hold Conference Call with Nursing Community
2. ACNM Coalition
Submits Comments on Proposed Plan Quality Rating System
1. HHS Secretary
Sebelius and HRSA Administrator Wakefield to Hold Conference Call with Nursing
Community
The Department of Health and Human Services has announced that Thursday, January 23, from 2:30 - 3:30
p.m. EST a conference call will be held for the nursing
community during which HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Administrator of
the Health Resources and Services Administration, Mary Wakefield, will provide
an update on implementation of the Affordable Care Act and the role of
nurses. Questions will be entertained during the call and HHS requests
that participants dial in no later than 2:25 p.m. EST.
The dial in number is 1-888-469-2186 and the Participant Passcode:
1296116#
2. ACNM Coalition
Submits Comments on Proposed Plan Quality Rating System
On Tuesday, January 21, the Coalition for Quality Maternity Care (CQMC), a
group led by ACNM, submitted comments to the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services (CMS) in response to a Notice that the agency issued on November
19, 2013. In this Notice, CMS outlined quality measures that will be
included within a developing Quality Rating System (QRS) to be used to rank
health plans offered through the new Health Insurance Marketplaces.
The Affordable Care Act requires Marketplaces to provide consumers with tools
for comparing plans to help them make informed decisions regarding which plans
they wish to enroll under. In CMS Notice, they list 42 quality measures
for use in the QRS. Only two of them dealt with maternity care.
Maternity care is one of ten mandated benefit categories that must be covered
by plans offered through the Marketplace (and many plans operating outside the
Marketplace as well).
The CQMC recommended that CMS include several other quality metrics related to
maternity care and suggested that the most important measures for use in the
QRS with regard to maternity care included those related to the rate of
cesarean sections, the rate of breastfeeding and the occurrence and timeliness
of prenatal and postpartum care.
