The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released 20 new proposed measures for quality and efficiency measures under consideration. CMS reviews and updates all quality measures annually for its programs, reviewing and removing less relevant ones and proposing more innovative metrics.
From CMS Administrator Seema Verma:
We launched Meaningful Measures because too many providers were wasting precious time and resources reporting on quality metrics, many of which were barely relevant to their specialty. Over the last four years, this initiative has delivered better, less onerous metrics that are actually useful to those who use them, The measures we are announcing today represent more of the same. They prioritize health outcomes, reduce burden and give providers more time to do the work they entered medicine to do: treat patients.
According to Modern Healthcare, CMS annually selects a list of measures that are then reviewed by the National Quality Forum’s measure application partnership so that stakeholders can offer responses and recommendations for the selections made by the agency. Ten of the 20 proposed measures are for the Merit-based Incentive Payment System.
Medical Economics also listed several highlights, including five outcome measures like the rate of healthcare-associated infections requiring hospitalization from skilled nursing facilities; cost/resource use measures that evaluate how frequently healthcare items or services are used in relation to what they cost; three composite measures; two patient reported outcomes measures; and five process measures.
The 2020 list also includes three process measures for COVID-19 vaccinations. these include coverage among healthcare personnel, vaccination by clinicians and vaccination for patients in End-Stage Renal Disease facilities.
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