Application to Use Burden/Hours from Generic PRA Clearance:
Medicaid and CHIP State Plan, Waiver, and Program Submissions
(CMS-10398, OMB 0938-1148)
Generic Information Collection #1
CHIP Annual Report Template System (CARTS)
August 2020
Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services (CMCS)
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) work in partnership with States to implement Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Together these programs provide health coverage to millions of Americans. Medicaid and CHIP are based in Federal statute, associated regulations and policy guidance, and the approved State plan documents that serve as a contract between CMS and States about how Medicaid and CHIP will be operated in that State. CMS works collaboratively with States in the ongoing management of programs and policies, and CMS continues to develop implementing guidance and templates for States to use to elect new options available as a result of the Affordable Care Act or to comply with new statutory provisions. CMS also continues to work with States through other methods to further the goals of health reform, including program waivers and demonstrations, and other technical assistance initiatives.
This August 2020 iteration revises the currently approved CHIP Annual Report Template System (CARTS) in regards to updates to the operating system that supports the CARTS template and updates in the design to improve functionality within the CARTS template as each state meets the statutory requirements with the submission of its CHIP Annual Report to CMS by the January 1 deadline following the end of the federal fiscal year according to guidance provided in section 2108(a) of the Social Security Act and in regulation under 42 CFR 457.750.
Sections 2108(a) and (e) of the Act and 42 CFR 457.750 provide that the State and Territories must assess the operation of the State child health plan in each Federal fiscal year, and report to the Secretary, by January 1 following the end of the Federal fiscal year, on the results of the assessment. In addition, this section of the Act provides that the State must assess the progress made in reducing the number of uncovered, low-income children.
CARTS is a web-based reporting framework that allows States to meet this statutory requirement. Through CARTS, states report on a variety of program areas including CHIP program changes, performance measures and progress, state plan and program operation, program financing, and program challenges and accomplishments. The attached framework (collection format) is designed to:
Recognize the diversity of State approaches to CHIP and allow States flexibility to highlight key accomplishments and progress of their CHIP programs,
Provide consistency across States in the structure, content, and format of the report,
Build on data already collected by CMS quarterly enrollment and expenditure reports, and
Enhance accessibility of information to stakeholders on the achievements under Title XXI.
Effective January 2020, Microsoft ended support for the Windows 2008 R2 operating system, which was the platform for the CARTS servers. This meant that bug fixes and security patches would no longer be available, and Microsoft would not provide any assistance relating to the operating system. In addition, the age of the applications used is about 20 years old and the CARTS application itself lacked some functionality in creating reports, saving drafts, and in general usability. For these reasons, outdated application, insufficient functionality and the end of life of the operation system, Data Services Group/Division of Information Systems (DSG/DIS) researched and assessed alternative supported operating systems for the CARTS application. As part of these efforts, the CARTS template instructions will also be updated to be clearer and incorporate plainer language. The revised CARTS application is scheduled to go live effective October 1, 2020.
This submission also encompasses changes made in the CARTS reporting template since our last submission in 2011. Since then, we have made very small incremental changes that we would like to include. Although we are still conducting user testing between now and our planned release, we do not anticipate changes to this August 2020 information collection request.
No deviations are requested.
The total approved burden ceiling of the generic ICR is 154,104 hours, and CMS previously requested to use 82,228 hours, leaving our burden ceiling at 71,876 hours.
Wage Estimates
To derive average costs, we used data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May 2019 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates for all salary estimates (http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm). In this regard, the following table presents the mean hourly wage, the cost of fringe benefits and overhead (calculated at 100 percent of salary), and the adjusted hourly wage.
Occupation Title |
Occupation Code |
Mean Hourly Wage ($/hr) |
Fringe Benefits and Overhead ($/hr) |
Adjusted Hourly Wage ($/hr) |
Project Management Specialist and Business Operations Specialist, and all Other |
13-1198 |
38.57 |
38.57 |
77.14 |
As indicated, we are adjusting our employee hourly wage estimates by a factor of 100 percent. This is necessarily a rough adjustment, both because fringe benefits and overhead costs vary significantly from employer to employer, and because methods of estimating these costs vary widely from study to study. Nonetheless, we believe that doubling the hourly wage to estimate total cost is a reasonably accurate estimation method.
IC Requirements and Associated Burden Estimates
The information requested in this collection is readily available to States. In our currently approved information collection request, we estimate that each State would complete the collection of data and submission to CMS within 40 hours. With a potential universe of 56 respondents, we estimated an annual ongoing burden of 2,240 hours (56 responses x 40 hours) at a cost of $ 172,794 (2,240 hr x $77.14/hr).
Although we are not requesting any changes to our currently approved time estimates, this August 2020 information collection request proposes to add 5 hours of burden to account for the limitations of the submission system which does not allow submissions having zero burden hours. In this case zero hours is appropriate since the revisions have no burden implications.
Outside of system limitations issue, the 5-hour burden estimate is also appropriate to avoid double counting of burden that is currently approved.
Information Collection Instruments, Instructions, and Guidance Documents
Attachment A – Framework for the Annual Report of the Children’s Health Insurance Plans Under Title XXI of the Social Security Act (Revised, Clean Version)
Attachment C – Track Change Version of CARTS Template Changes btw 2011 and 2020
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | CMS |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-01-13 |