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CMS Goals and Priorities

CMS Goals and Priorities Overview

At CMS, the top priority is putting persons first, with the person always at the center of CMS’s work. CMS’s strategic goals support individuals and their overall care experience by

  • Improving the CMS customer experience
  • Ushering in an era of state flexibility and local leadership
  • Supporting innovative approaches to improve quality, accessibility, and affordability
  • Empowering persons and clinicians to make decisions about their health care.

In order to put persons first across all programs – Medicaid, Medicare, and the Health Insurance Exchanges – CMS must empower individuals to work with their physicians and other clinicians to make health care decisions that are best for them. 

Empowerment means giving individuals meaningful information about quality and costs to be active health care consumers. It also includes supporting innovative approaches to improving quality, accessibility, and affordability, while finding the best ways to use innovative technology to support person-centered care. 

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Empowering Individuals 

CMS puts individuals at the center of our health care system by ensuring they have the resources they need to make the best decisions for themselves and their families.

 

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Focusing on Results

CMS uses new flexibilities and incentives, working to make sure persons receive the right care, at the right time, in the right place while protecting taxpayers by paying for care based on results.

 

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Unleashing Innovation

CMS continues to remove the barriers that limit innovation. We need innovations to make a health care system where measured entities and health plans compete to deliver better care at lower costs.

 

 

Much of the quality measurement work across CMS aligns with its quality initiatives. With a focus on better health outcomes for individuals, CMS holds measured entities accountable for providing safe and effective care, while minimizing administrative burden to ensure clinicians can spend more time with persons. The focus is on empowering individuals to make decisions about their health care based on quality and cost information by moving our quality programs to measure value and to provide persons access to information in an understandable and actionable way.

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