The Joint Commission announced that it is expanding the capabilities of its quality measure program to provide accredited hospitals with year-round, real-time access to quality measures.
The nonprofit Joint Commission accredits and certifies more than 21,000 healthcare organizations and programs in the United States. Over the last two years, it has worked to transform its electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM) reporting process by creating a Direct Data Submission Platform (DDSP). The commission is now making that platform and quality measure results continuously available, allowing providers to measure and improve performance in near real-time without additional outside vendors.
The DDSP is the first solution to make clinical quality language-based eCQMs available to providers in an execution environment where they can generate and use the results continuously. Clinical quality language (CQL) is the new industry standard for measures, used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for 2019 eCQM reporting, and endorsed by HL7 International. (In 2016, KP Sethi, senior software architect at Lantana Consulting Group and co-chair of HL7’s Clinical Quality Information workgroup, gave a presentation explaining the potential of CQL.)
CQL brings together the underlying logic of quality measurement, clinical pathways, clinical decision support and more. It can eliminate manual translation of measures, requiring fewer resources and less time spent in measures implementation. The Joint Commission can now use a single environment to specify, develop, test, and distribute CQL measures for use.
With the Joint Commission’s DDSP, accredited hospitals now have additional tools to go beyond simply sending data one way. They can use that information to improve quality performance and data accuracy in near real-time.
“What we’ve accomplished in the last two years with the Direct Data Submission Platform has delivered ongoing value for our accredited hospitals,” said David Baker, M.D., executive vice president for the Division of Health Care Quality Evaluation at The Joint Commission, in a statement. “We’re thrilled to build on that value with continuous quality insights that empower providers to make real-time performance improvements.”
The Joint Commission has partnered with Apervita to provide the cloud platform that underpins this program by enabling providers to specify, develop, test, and execute eCQMs, as well as create and distribute applications that use them, in the cloud at scale. Apervita said its mission is aligned with The Joint Commission to reduce cost and improve quality.
