The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced it will award up to $30 million in grant funding to clinical specialty societies, clinical professional organizations and independent research organizations to develop quality measures under the Medicare Access and Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA).
According to CMS, in its announcement, the grant is open to “clinical specialty societies, clinical professional organizations, patient advocacy organizations, educational institutions, independent research organizations, health systems, and other entities engaged in quality measure development.”
The application deadline is Sept. 30 and awards will be announced Nov. 30, with grant funding for the 2018 fiscal year.
CMS says that the funding opportunity will be used for developing, improving, updating or expanding quality measures for use in the Quality Payment Program under the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and/or Advanced Alternative Payment Models (APMs).
“Recognizing the benefits of measure development by external stakeholders with specific knowledge of clinician and patient perspectives and needs, the funding assistance of these cooperative agreements is specifically designated for entities, external to CMS and other federal agencies, such as clinical specialty societies, clinical professional organizations, patient advocacy organizations, educational institutions, independent research organizations, health systems, and other entities with working knowledge in quality measure development to develop quality measures that could be potentially used for the Quality Payment Program,” CMS wrote in its announcement.
CMS stated these external entities provide the needed medical specialty and patient perspectives to lead or support the measure development priorities of MACRA and to advance the Quality Payment Program measure portfolio.
“Specifically, collaboration and support for these entities in measure development will assist CMS in addressing such essential topics as: clinician engagement, burden reduction, consumer informed decisions, critical measure gaps, shared care and payment accountability quality measure alignment, and efficient data collection,” the agency wrote.
Further, CMS said the output of this work will be “one or more fully developed, specified, and tested quality measures for potential use in the Quality Payment Program tracks” of MIPS or APMs tracks.
