Author Archives: Amy Chepaitis and Amarilys Bernacet

About Amy Chepaitis and Amarilys Bernacet

Amarilys Bernacet is a research public health analyst in the Quality Measurement and Health Policy group within the eHealth, Quality, and Analytics Division. She has experience in health policy research and has a beneficiary advocacy and policy background in Medicaid, Medicare, and federal low-income programs. Ms. Bernacet works on several program evaluation and implementation projects. She is currently leading analyses of potential impacts of the pandemic on claims data and quality measure performance scores on one of her project task teams.

Downstream Efforts to Address Social Determinants in the CMS Financial Alignment Initiative

In our last blog post, we discussed the Biden Administration’s infrastructure package as an example of an upstream policy effort that could promote equity and help address disparities. However, as we pointed out in the first in this series of blogs, stakeholders who interact with community members are best suited to identify social risk factors… Read More »

Infrastructure investments, SDOH, and equity

The Biden Administration’s proposed infrastructure investments are an example of an upstream effort to address disparities related to social determinants of health (SDOH). As mentioned in our previous blog post, SDOH are the conditions or circumstances within which people live, and these differ based on the distribution of power, money, and resources. The systems and… Read More »

Social determinants of health: Language nuance matters

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines social determinants of health (SDOH) as the non-medical factors that influence health outcomes. They are the “conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age.” Currently, SDOH is a hot topic as stakeholders try new ways to improve individual and population health, achieve health equity, and reduce… Read More »

Potential effects of COVID-19 on health care utilization and quality measures

What are the potential impacts of COVID-19 on health care utilization? How will changes in healthcare use impact quality measures? Researchers are asking many key questions to understand the impacts of COVID-19. It is clear that trends in healthcare use are changing. These changes will likely affect quality measure scores in the future. This is… Read More »