Hospitals Struggle To Use EHRs To Report eCQMs

A new study by CMS has found that hospitals are struggling to use their EHRs to report electronic clinical quality measures. The agency found that while EHRs helped contractors collect data remotely using hospital staffers, EHR platforms “had not yet matured” enough to meet the specs required, according to Managed Care magazine.

The CMS findings came from a validation pilot study of eCQMs. The goal of the pilot study was to evaluate approaches for validating eCQMs for the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting program.

The program, which was mandated by the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, authorized CMS to pay hospitals a higher annual update to their payment rates if they successfully reported designated quality measures. Later legislation mandated that Medicare hospitals that don’t successfully report would be hit with a 2.0% reduction in the annual rate of inflation used to calculate payment.

One might guess that putting EHRs in place would help hospitals comply. But it appears that this is not been the case in many instances. In fact, hospital IT leaders are facing some significant challenges in linking EHR data to the required reporting format.

To accurately report eCQMs, hospitals must create complete and accurate Quality Reporting Data Architecture (QRDA)-I files based on 2014 eCQM specifications. But hospitals reported that they were having a hard time mapping the information in the EHR systems to the QRDA-I specifications, particularly given the use of unstructured data fields and multiple source of information for various events, Managed Care reported. Measures match rates, in turn, were rather low, ranging from 12% to 49%.

The hospitals involved in the pilot also said that data mapping and workflow issues were major problems. For example, as it turned out much of the information they needed was locked up in free text, notes or scanned documents rather than discrete data fields. That made it impossible for those hospitals to extract the data and mapping to the elements found in the QRDA-I files.

To solve these problems, pilot hospital reported, CMS should consider addressing three key areas: boost communication, outreach and education to raise hospital and vendor understanding of eCQMs; cut down the burden imposed by eCQM adoption; and offer tools and guidance to help hospitals with eCQM implementation.

As CMS learns, the help hospitals want should be forthcoming. In the report, CMS said that it plans to conduct additional validation pilots in the future. The agency said its goal will be able to help hospitals and vendors transition to eCQM reporting, and over time to increase the accuracy of the data that gets reported.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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