A missed opportunity to address a national shame: the case of sickle cell disease in the United States

In November 2018, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced there would be no changes to the core set of 25 pediatric quality measures on which states report performance for the Medicaid program.1 In doing so, CMS ignored the almost unanimous (19-1) recommendation of the Pediatric Measure Application Partnership (P-MAP), an expert committee empaneled by the agency, and also importantly missed a historic opportunity to definitively address a national shame, the poor state of care provided to children with sickle cell disease (SCD). Abstract source