Medicare Shared Savings Program Initiatives Overview
Proposed Stage 2 Meaningful Use Clinical Quality Measures Present Significant Challenge for Specialists
On April 24, the quality measures work group of the federally chartered Health IT Policy Committee met in Washington to review its final list of recommendations to the full policy committee on the proposed rule for the Stage 2 meaningful use criteria issued by CMS in February. At issue was how clinical quality measures (CQM) for physicians and other eligible professionals could best be incorporated into the Stage 2 meaningful use requirements, expected to take effect in 2014 as part of the EHR incentive payment program. The work group discussed the option of requiring eligible professionals (EPs) to select and submit 12 CQM from a table of 125 possible measures. In addition, at least one measure would have to address each of six care-improvement "domains": patient and family engagement, patient safety, care coordination, population and public health, efficient use of health resources, and clinical process/effectiveness.
One of the main points of contention regarding this option is trying to find measures to fit all of the various medical specialties. The work group acknowledged that specialists will face "a significant challenge" finding a dozen measures, even out of 125, that are applicable to their practices and cover all six domains.
The work group has another meeting scheduled for today. Its final list of recommendations on the proposed rule is to be presented to the full policy committee May 4..
