Medicare & Medicaid Services

discuss:

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), quality measures rare represented in structured Health Quality Measure Format (HQMF) is a way that they can be interpreted by information systems like electronic health records (EHR). Electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs) are tools used to measure and track quality of health care services. Eligible professionals, hospitals, and critical access hospitals generate information populated through the EHR. Measuring eCQMs help to ensure the safe effective, efficient, equitable, timely, and patient-centered care (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services [CMS], n.d.). Several eCQM measures are monitored. Patient and family engagement, patient safety, care coordination, population/public health, efficient use of healthcare resources, and clinical process/effectiveness. There are many barriers to full meaningful use, however, many benefits have been identified. Baillieu et al., states when an organization is implementing eMeansures and eCQM programs, the nurse informaticist may need to convince naysayers of the benefits that can be derived. Meaningful use of eMeasures and eCQMs used by primary care providers facilitates quality improvement (QI), presents unnecessary acute care visits, improves patient outcomes and promises to promote better continuity of care, especially for the underserved patient populations. Another convincing argument is the fact there has been a positive association between practice size and meaningful use in both adult and pediatric preventative care, suggesting successful implementation of clinical care and workflow that is supported by health IT contributes to reducing preventable chronic diseases. Understanding that advancements in health IT can improve patient outcomes by improving capacity for disease prevention, improve health promoting and chronic care management are compelling reasons to implement eMeasures and eCQMs (Baillieu et al., 2020).