CMS Releases Core Quality Measurement Plans for Review
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CMS and America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) recently released the core set of quality measures for use in a total of seven areas, including cardiology, medical oncology, orthopedics and other specialty areas. Future releases of these measures could render applicable to urology, as well. The quality measures were addressed in collaboration to address creating some common metrics across public and private payers. Currently physician offices have to track different payers’ measures and document them, adding a significant strain to practices.
The consensus core sets will highlight specific measurements by thirdparty organizations, like the American College of Surgeons or ASCO, to determine if a measure will be included in the core set or if additional information is needed to see if a practice will have this information available in an EHR. The document also indicates what issues might be considered in future measures development.
Designed to be meaningful to patients, consumers, and physicians, the alignment of these core measure sets will aid in:
- promotion of measurement that is evidencebased and generates valuable information for quality improvement,
- consumer decisionmaking,
- valuebased payment and purchasing,
- reduction in the variability in measure selection, and
- decreased provider's collection burden and cost.
CMS will have a public notice and comment period to receive input on the proposed measures. For a listing of all Core Measures, you can click here.
