Joint Commission Selects Apervita Platform to Ease Hospital eCQM Submission

The Joint Commission, which accredits health systems, has selected Chicago-based Apervita’s platform to enable thousands of hospitals with ORYX data reporting requirements to directly submit electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM) data in 2018.

Until recently, most hospitals manually abstracted data from patient records to compile and submit their quality measures for patient care. Others have moved forward in adopting eCQMs that rely on structured, encoded data present in the electronic health record.  Since the shift to eCQM data submission began two years ago, the Joint Commission has worked to identify a technology platform that would enable hospitals to directly submit eCQM data without retaining a third-party vendor.

“The ability to receive eCQM data submissions directly from our accredited hospitals has been an important goal for several years,” said David Baker, M.D., M.P.H., executive vice president for health care quality evaluation at the Joint Commission, in a prepared statement. “The more we can do to reduce the time, cost, and resources associated with data and submissions, the more we can all focus on continuous quality improvement while keeping pace with the ever-changing demands of the measurement environment.”

The Joint Commission’s rollout of Apervita’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for direct eCQM data submission is under way, with more than 500 hospitals participating in the initial implementation. 

A technical advisory panel of hospital-based leadership and technical experts are providing input to help ensure the direct submission platform and processes operate efficiently and serve the needs of accredited hospitals, which will be required to submit quality data via eCQMs in 2018.