CMS News Center

Medicare and other payers are rapidly moving toward a healthcare system that rewards high-quality care while spending money more wisely. Foundational to the success of these efforts is having quality measures that are meaningful to patients, consumers, and providers alike, according to officials with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). To that end, CMS has launched its “Meaningful Measures” initiative to identify what the organization considers to be the most impactful areas for quality measurement and improvement while reflecting core issues that are most vital to high-quality care and better individual outcomes. Each year, CMS publishes a list of quality and cost measures that are under consideration for Medicare quality reporting and value-based purchasing programs, and collaborates with the National Quality Forum to get input from multiple stakeholders, including patients, families, caregivers, clinicians, commercial payers, and purchasers, on the measures that are best suited for these programs. Ultimately, these measures may help patients choose the nursing home, hospital, or clinician that they believe is best for them and can help providers to offer the highest quality of care across care settings.  

This year’s “Measures Under Consideration” (MUC) list contains 32 measures that have the potential to drive improvement in quality across numerous settings of care, including clinician practices, hospitals, and dialysis facilities, CMS officials said. CMS is also considering new measures to help quantify healthcare outcomes and track the effectiveness, safety, and patient-centeredness of the care provided, according to officials. At the same time, CMS is taking a new approach to coordinated implementation of meaningful quality measures focused on what it considers to be the most critical, highly impactful areas for improvement, while reducing the burden of quality reporting on all providers so that more time can be spent with patients. In addition to other factors, CMS evaluated the measures on the MUC list to ensure that measures considered for adoption in a CMS program through rulemaking, as necessary, focus on clearly defined, meaningful measure priority areas that safeguard public health and improve patient outcomes, officials said. To generate this year’s MUC list, CMS considered 184 measures submitted by stakeholders during an open call for measures. Considering the meaningful measurement areas, CMS narrowed the list to 32 measures (17% of the original submissions) that focus CMS’ efforts to achieve goals of high-quality healthcare and meaningful outcomes for patients (while minimizing burden.) CMS will continue to use the “Meaningful Measures” approach to strategically assess the development and implementation of quality measure sets that are the most parsimonious and least burdensome, that are well understood by external stakeholders, and are most likely to drive improvement in health outcomes, officials said.  

This year, approximately 40% of measures on the MUC list are outcome measures, including patient-reported outcome measures, that CMS officials believe will help empower patients to make decisions about their own healthcare and help clinicians to make continuous improvements in the care provided. In addition, this year there are eight episode-based cost measures proposed that were developed by incorporating the insight and expertise of clinicians and specialty societies. 

Providers are invited to review the MUC list in detail and to participate in the public process. For more information, visit www.qualityforum.org/map. 

New Accredited Online Courses, Resources Available

Officials with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have released new Quality Payment Program (QPP) courses, the seventh and eighth courses in an evolving curriculum on the QPP, in which participants will gain knowledge and insight on the program while earning continuing education credits. 

According to CMS, those who participate in the seventh course will learn about:

• base, performance, and bonus score reporting requirements for the Advancing Care Information (ACI) performance category of the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS);
• identifying the two ACI performance category measure sets available for the 2017 transition year that vary depending on the edition of certified electronic health record technology; and
• identifying the scoring and reweighting methodology for the ACI performance category.

The eighth course provides education on:

• participation in MIPS, including recognizing who is a MIPS-eligible clinician and who is exempt;
• pick-your-pace options and the difference between individual and group reporting; and
• data submission methods, available resources, and where to go for help with the QPP.