Who We Are The Mission of the CAHMI How the CAHMI Achieves This Mission CAHMI Tools How CAHMI Differs from FACCT CAHMI Funders CAHMI Advisors The CAHMI Team Collaborating with the CAHMI Donate to the CAHMI How to Cite the CAHMI
Who We Are The Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative (CAHMI) is a national initiative based out of Oregon Health and Science University in the Department of Pediatrics in Portland, OR. Originally housed at FACCT - Foundation for Accountability, the CAHMI was established in 1998. The Mission of the CAHMI To ensure that children, youth and families are at the center of quality measurement and improvement efforts in order to advance a high quality consumer-centered health care system. The CAHMI achieves this mission through the development, testing and strategic implementation nationally, state-wide and locally of valid health care quality and outcomes measures and the effective communication and dissemination of this research to inform and advance improvements in policy and practice. How the CAHMI Achieves This Mission The CAHMI has three strategic priorities that are the focus of individual project and leadership activities: Keep the focus on consumer-centered health care. We do this by participating on a number of national committees and advisory boards to represent valid methods and strategies for ensuring children, youth and families are at the center of quality measurement and improvement efforts. Secondly, we provide assistance in the specification of consumer-centered strategies in national, state, plan and provider quality initiatives. The CAHMI also coordinates stakeholders and other efforts to advance child and adolescent health care quality measurement and improvement. Build the supply for consumer-centered measurement strategies. We accomplish this goal by developing reliable, valid and consumer-centered health measures and by identifying remaining gaps in consumer-centered health care. Additional information about the tools the CAHMI has developed is provided in the next section. Build the demand for consumer-centered measurement and improvement. We focus on this goal by designing, testing and demonstrating the impact of consumer-centered tools and strategies to improve health systems. The CAHMI also seeks projects focused on informing and activating consumers as child and adolescent health care quality improvement partners. CAHMI Tools The CAHMI has developed a number of quality measurement tools and strategies that assess the quality of care provided to children and young adults. Many of the tools that the CAHMI has developed are surveys that patients themselves complete. The CAHMI has developed, tested and implemented measurement strategies that assess preventive and developmental services for young children and adolescents, including: - Standardized developmental and behavioral screening;
- Care provided to children with special health care needs, including how to identify children with special health care needs using a survey that parents and/or teens complete;
- Avoidable hospitalizations;
- Whether a child has a medical home, including measures specific to children with special health care needs;
- Whether care is culturally competent; and
- Other topic areas.
In addition, the CAHMI has developed the Data Resource Center, a website focused on presenting national data sets in a user-friendly format. The Data Resource Center offers data from the National Survey of Children’s Health and the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs.
How CAHMI Differs from FACCT The CAHMI was established in 1997 at FACCT - The Foundation for Accountability and transferred to Oregon Health & Science University in 2004. CAHMI owns the intellectual property and copyright for all tools and resources developed while at FACCT. CAHMI Funders Current funding for the CAHMI is from grants by federal Maternal Child and Bureau, Heath Resources and Services Administration, The Commonwealth Fund and via contracts for consulting and technical assistance. Past funding to establish the CAHMI was from The David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Funding for the development of this website was received from the Commonwealth Fund.
CAHMI Advisors The CAHMI has a number of advisory committees that provide input and guidance. These advisory committees incorporate a wide range of stakeholders and expertise in the field of child and adolescent health care quality. The CAHMI Executive Committee (EC) provides strategic and programmatic guidance to the activities of the CAHMI. The CAHMI EC serves as a vehicle for facilitating involvement and collaboration among key constituencies that influence child and adolescent healthcare delivery, quality measurement and reporting nationally and at the state and local levels. From 1998-2003, the CAHMI maintained a broad-based national advisory committee and topic-specific task forces cutting across key quality of care domains (e.g. Staying Healthy/Healthy Development, Getting Better, Living with Illness). Through this work, the CAHMI brought together more than 80 consumer organizations, public agencies, researchers, health care plans and providers in a collaborative effort to provide leadership and resources for measuring and communicating information about the quality of health care for children and adolescents. These measurement development task forces maintained a consumer-centered focus and followed a standard six-step measure development and testing process. This process, developed by the CAHMI, abides by criteria of relevance, scientific soundness and feasibility.
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