CMS: Activities, Staffing, and Funding for the Center for Strategic Planning
Highlights
What GAO Found
Why GAO Did This Study
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)--an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)--is responsible for overseeing Medicare, Medicaid, and the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Together, these programs provide health insurance coverage for over 100 million men, women, and children and account for a significant share of national health care spending. Medicare and Medicaid expenditures accounted for 36 percent of national health care spending in 2011 and are expected to increase as a share of national health care spending, driven in part by increases in Medicare enrollment and expanded Medicaid coverage.
With its programs playing a central role in the financing of the nation's health care for the foreseeable future, CMS has taken steps to make the agency's strategic planning a priority. In 2010, as part of an internal reorganization, CMS established the Center for Strategic Planning (CSP) to facilitate the agency's strategic planning efforts. You expressed an interest in learning more about the activities CSP conducts to facilitate CMS's strategic planning. This report describes CSP's current activities and staffing, as well as CSP's funding for the most recent full fiscal year.
For more information, contact Linda T. Kohn at (202) 512-7114 or kohnl@gao.gov.