Mark Boward

• Dr. Boward contributes to, and assists in performing, the impact evaluation that assesses the effectiveness of Hospital Quality Improvement Contractors (HQIC) intervention support regarding healthcare quality improvement, patient safety enhancement, and readmission reduction. The evaluation employs Difference-in-Differences (DiD) models to estimate the impact of interventions on various health outcomes, including pressure injuries, postoperative sepsis, catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI), and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
• Dr. Boward is evaluating the variability in hospital quality performance among hospitals with different profit margins and examining the relationship between hospital profit margins and performance outcomes in Medicare-certified hospitals. This evaluation focuses on several key programs: the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (Hospital VBP) program, Hospital-Acquired Conditions (HAC) Reduction Program (HACRP), Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP), and Medicare Promoting Interoperability (PI) Program.
• Dr. Boward was the systems, analytics, and data lead for the CMS/CMMI ET3 IMC. His responsibilities included 1) the design, creation, and enhancements of the data warehouse used collect and process data from multiple systems for monitoring the Model Participants and their partners, 2) working closely with the client to design over 100 key metrics providing insight into patient safety and Participant & Partner behavior. The source data was pulled from several CMS systems, including the Integrated Data Repository – Cloud (IDRC), Chronic Condition Data Warehouse (CCW), Baltimore Data Center mainframe, and the CMMI Reusable Framework. Dr. Boward leads the analytics team that designs and produces actionable and user-friendly report to the CMS client. The analytics team worked closely with CMS and other contractors during the development of system requirement documentation, to avoid or promptly resolve unexpected technical issues. These documents included ET3 focused interface control documents (ICDs) and change requests (CRs) to ensure successful transferring of data among CMS’ systems. The analytics team reviewed user stories with the IDOS (CMS system) contractor and validated them to ensure they are complete and fully cover all business requirements. The team also participated in User Acceptance testing when requested.
• Dr. Boward worked on the CMS PEPV (also known as the Part D Improper Payment Measure) contract and oversaw the migration from the Booz Allen Hamilton Cyber Computing Center to CMS-owned systems. Dr. Boward developed methods to leverage CMS's Teradata/Snowflake platform to increase the speed and capabilities of the PEPV's complex analytical and statistical requirements. He also developed new reporting capabilities, including historical lookbacks, and benchmarking.

• Dr. Boward led the Quality Assurance team for CMS’ CPC+ (Comprehensive Primary Care Plus initiative), a value-based program. The team was responsible for independently creating the SAS code used to confirm CMS’ systems pulled correct data and properly applied business rules for the Advanced Payment Model. This included processing a variety of data elements, such as Fee-For-Service claims and quality measures (CAHPS, PQRS, MIPS). The Quality Assurance process required interaction with multiple CMS systems, including the CCW, BDC mainframe, and IDR. He also helped with the enhancement of the CMMI CPC+ interactive dashboard user interface, and backend, to provide participants with actionable information, including performance on leading indicators.
• Dr. Boward led a team of statisticians and SAS programmers who perform advanced statistics to develop and explore alternate sampling designs for both the nationally representative sample as well as the contract level samples. He also led a team that conducted work on the CMS FFS adjuster used for contract level audits. The FFS adjuster is intended to represent a measure of FFS diagnosis coding error that would be comparable to MA RADV coding error. Work on the project required extensive examination and analysis of the CMS-HCC, including recalibration and analysis of claims data. He interfaces regularly with the Government Task Leader and other staff members in the agency in response to ad hoc data analysis requests and periodic reports that provided CMS with information to help inform their policy decisions.

Dr. Boward assisted with analyzing the payment system overview, identifying risks, rankings of all identified risks, and assisting in calculating a Part C Payment Error. Phase 2 includes the development of a Measurement Methodology for selected Part C, D and RDS High Risk Areas.Dr. Boward oversaw the development of the web system which was used to collect various data elements from Medicare Advantage Organizations (MAO). These data elements were used to evaluate the appropriateness of complaint handling by MAOs. Dr. Boward later lead and participated in document review in which complaints from 1-800-Medicare complaints were reviewed and, using data collected from the multiple system, analyzed whether they were appropriately addressed. Following the analysis, he led the presentation of the findings to CMS and managed the communication with the client. He also led to the writing of the results paper.

• Dr. Boward led the IMPAQ team which developed the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for the Risk Adjustment Data Validation (RADV) Process. Dr. Boward was also a key member of the IMPAQ team which designed a statistically sound methodology which combined separate errors into a composite error. His responsibilities included; monthly support with the validation of the Medicare Advantage prospective payments, data analysis and report writing on the identified payment error, research into other external data sources to develop methodologies for estimating additional payment error, and consultation on methodologies to reduce error rates.
• Dr. Boward’s activities included assisting in developing data extraction tools, logic models, national evaluation designs, and determination of the Medicaid minimum dataset that will allow access to individually identifiable functional assessment data for purposes of project-specific analyses. He also served as the Technical Assistant to 4 of the participating states. Via monthly conference calls and ad-hoc meetings, Dr. Boward helped states deal with issues affecting the validity of the state data.

• Dr. Boward oversaw satisfaction measurements for their Disease Management (DM) program as well as the development and administration of ad-hoc projects. Working with a variety of expert panels, Mr. Boward developed surveys to measure program understanding as well as satisfaction levels of all individuals involved with the DM or ad-hoc projects. Surveys were developed for a variety of target populations, including but not limited to: 1) youth with serious mental illness, 2) Medicare enrollees, 3) Medicaid participants, and 4) individuals at risk for higher coverage cost. Survey results were used to target and enhance areas with low satisfaction and/or participant misunderstanding. These measures were also instrumental in achieving or maintaining national certification for the DM and ad-hoc projects, such as JCAHO. The administration of these advanced level projects included the coordination and management of meetings with personnel at the Care Management Center and national departments in order to perform necessary functions related to developing or modifying survey instruments, conducting quality and outcome studies, developing and maintaining databases, analyzing findings and reporting results.