Milestones: Valuable Roadmap, But No Longer a Site Map

This post is the first in an occasional series that will help you get the most out of your visits to statereforum.org. As the site’s community manager, Elizabeth Cronen anticipates the community’s informational interests, promotes noteworthy content, and responds to users’ navigation questions. In this inaugural column, she sheds light on State Refor(u)m’s “milestone” framework, a valuable tool that many in the community have asked about.  
Longtime users of State Refor(u)m may have noticed that we’ve moved some content around, and made discussions easier to navigate. Short, intuitive topical terms now label each discussion. These topics replaced State Refor(u)m’s set of health reform milestones as the organizational structure for the site, but the milestones are still important. They remain a roadmap to help states make smart, informed implementation choices, and a voluntary tracking system to indicate state’s implementation progress.
The milestones guide states to not just meet their obligations under the ACA, but to also meet state and national health policy goals, like cost-effective health care and improved public health.  And in sharing online the work they do to complete milestones, state leaders can give their peers valuable ideas for taking similar steps in other states.
For example, one milestone recommends that states establish criteria or a process for deciding which ACA-funded federal grants to pursue. New Mexico completed that milestone when aregistered user submitted to State Refor(u)m a spreadsheet that summarizes federal grant opportunities and offers recommendations about applying. Illinois completed a separate milestone—one that calls on states to develop a plan for building a health information exchange—when a state official posted the Illinois HIE Strategic and Operational Plan.
Your state may have already completed comparable work, but not posted it on statereforum.org. Bring your progress measure up to date by visiting the site, and submitting documents or links that show what’s happening in your state.
Where to find the milestones, and what “progress” measures mean
Look for the milestones in the “state progress” section of State Refor(u)m. Choose your state from the map, and then click a category like “Insurance Exchanges” or “Benefit Design.” The milestones for each category will appear in a “milestone implementation checklist.”

The percentages you see on the state progress pages measure the share of milestones a state has reported as complete. Have you seen your state’s percentages (one figure for overall progress, and one figure for each category)? Don’t be alarmed if you see small numbers: your state likely has completed but not yet requested milestone credit for work that can raise these counts. Since State Refor(u)m doesn’t conduct comprehensive surveys of state progress, the siterelies on users to report state health reform activities. Also, the milestones are meant to be completed over time, so states have until 2014 and beyond to continue their implementation work and post examples of it to statereforum.org.
Earning credit for completed milestones is easy!
Only work done or officially contracted by a state agency can qualify for milestone credit, but anyone registered and logged in to State Refor(u)m may report progress. Just navigate to a state and its milestones through the “state progress” page, or log in and click “my state” from the top of the page. Once at your state’s list of milestones, click a milestone to see directions for submitting documents and links.

You can also request credit from inside a discussion forum or anytime you upload a document to the site. Just check the “milestone credit” box when uploading a document with your comment.

State Refor(u)m will review the materials and award credit as appropriate.
Your feedback
Have you used the milestones, whether to guide your work or to demonstrate progress? Our team would like to hear from you! Do you find the framework useful? Can you think of ways to improve it? Let us know in the comments below, and the State Refor(u)m team will use the feedback as we continue to improve this site.