To stimulate health system transformation, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) launched the State Innovation Model (SIM) Initiative, which since 2013, has invested more than 1 billion dollars in states’ efforts to plan, pilot test, and implement payment and delivery system reforms. The UC Berkeley Center for Healthcare Organizational and Innovation Research (CHOIR) has been awarded research funding by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to examine the impact of the SIM Initiative on diabetes prevention and management. The natural experiment will take advantage of the variable and stepped implementation of SIM plans by states to measure the impact of the CMS SIM initiative on health behaviors relevant to diabetes prevention and reduced complications of diabetes at the population level. In addition, the project will examine the role of increased adoption of diabetes care management processes, advanced health information technology capabilities, and the patient-centered medical home model, and accountable care organization participation among physician organizations in explaining improvements in diabetes prevention and management in SIM states. The economic impact of the diabetes care prevention and management improvements attributable to the SIM Initiative will also be estimated.
The five-year, 2.2 million dollar project’s Principal Investigator, Hector P. Rodriguez, Associate Director of CHOIR and Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at UC Berkeley, said:
“The project will yield actionable analyses to state and local health officials, and public health and health care delivery stakeholders of the impact of the SIM Initiative on improvements on diabetes prevention and management.”
Co-investigators include Stephen M. Shortell and Brent Fulton of UC Berkeley, Diane Rittenhouse of UCSF, and Carrie Colla of Dartmouth College.