Quality Measures Collaborative Updates Measures, Identifies Gaps

April 11, 2022
Public-private Core Quality Measures Collaborative sees need for new measures that assess health equity, digital quality measures

The Core Quality Measures Collaborative (CQMC) recently announced updates to five of its measure sets, including both the addition of new measures, such as outcomes measures that are patient-focused, and the removal of measures that are no longer supported by evidence.

The CQMC is a public-private partnership between AHIP and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and is convened by the National Quality Forum (NQF). It works to recommend core sets of measures by clinical area to assess and improve the quality of healthcare in America.

The CQMC core measure sets are the culmination of more than 75 multi-stakeholder member organizations evaluating hundreds of existing quality measures against the CQMC’s selection criteria and recommending consensus-based measures that are evidence-based to promote alignment across public and private payers within value-based contracts. The measures not only provide a roadmap for clinicians to improve care, CQMC said, but also give consumers valuable information on which to choose clinicians.

All core set notes were updated to reflect telehealth eligibilities, endorsement status, and other considerations for the measures. The CQMC says it routinely assess its sets to ensure novel concepts are incorporated while only high-value measures are maintained.

“The CQMC core measure sets help assess the quality of care being delivered by physicians in value-based payment arrangements,” said Danielle Lloyd, M.P.H., senior vice president of private market innovations and quality initiatives at AHIP and CQMC steering committee chair, in a statement. “With these changes, the CQMC is furthering its goals of ensuring patients are receiving patient-centered, evidence-based, high-quality, and coordinated care while reducing provider burden through aligned measurement in key clinical areas.”

As part of the CQMC process, member organizations also catalogue areas prime for measure development. The CQMC also released its annual Analysis of Measurement Gap Areas and Measure Alignment Report that highlights, among other measurement gaps, the need for new measures that assess health equity and digital quality measures.

“As we expand performance measurement, it is critical that we move to digital measurement to reduce the resources required and get the information in front of the physicians when it counts,” said Lloyd. “Moreover, we need to get physicians information on not only clinical gaps in care, but also social barriers patients may be facing contributing to disparities in outcomes.”

Referring to patient-reported outcome performance measures (PRO-PMs), the CQMC said it recognizes the value of both disease-agnostic and disease-specific input to capture the patient’s perspective along their healthcare journey. “Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) help clinicians gather information that may not be available from other sources and ensure the patient voice is considered in planning care delivery,” its report said. “While the CQMC has noted its interest in including PRO-PMs in the core sets when applicable, a limited number of fully tested PRO-PMs remain available for review. However, the CMQC also noted the need to balance the burden of capturing patient-reported data and reporting PRO-PMs.

The CQMC core measure sets address the following specialties: Accountable Care Organizations/Patient Centered Medical Homes/Primary Care, Behavioral Health, Cardiology, Gastroenterology, HIV & Hepatitis C, Medical Oncology, Neurology, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Orthopedics, and Pediatrics.

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