This report provides an analysis of the recently released 2021 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Scorecard. This is the fourth annual release of the Scorecard. As in our analysis of previous years’ Scorecards, we primarily focus on the quality measures included in the Scorecard, based on the Child and Adult Core Set data. We provide a brief overview of the Scorecard and our analysis. We also highlight a few upcoming policy changes related to the Child and Adult Core Sets, with additional directed payment guidance, as well as mandatory reporting of certain Core Set measures in the future. Additionally, this year we have enhanced our review of state-specific comments for each rate reported in the Core Sets.

For states with available data, performance rates have been summarized into state profile reports (provided in separate documents), which illustrate how each state’s performance rates measure relative to other states, controlling for variances in reporting methodologies and underlying populations for each quality measure.