AHRQ Health IT Update: 2014 Clinical Quality Measures

AHRQ Health IT Update: 2014 Clinical Quality Measures

AHRQ Health IT Update: 2014 Clinical Quality Measures

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) sent this bulletin at 10/26/2012 12:53 PM EDT

2014 Meaningful Use Clinical Quality Measures Posted to USHIK

The final 2014 clinical quality measures (CQMs) for eligible professionals and hospitals are now available, along with the specifications for electronic reporting and access to the related data elements and value sets. The value sets define clinical concepts, providing a list of numerical values (e.g., code values from the vocabularies of ICD-9, SNOMED CT, etc.) and individual descriptions for the clinical concepts (e.g., the diagnosis or procedure,) used to define the quality measures. Each clinical concept referenced in a clinical quality measure is represented by a set of code values, also known as value sets.

To help providers and vendors navigate the new CQM specifications, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has developed the United States Healthcare Knowledgebase (USHIK) with both Meaningful Use Stage 1 and Stage 2 (2014) clinical quality measures. The USHIK website provides a number of formats for viewing, downloading, and comparing versions of electronic CQMs and their value sets—some human-readable, some computable—in response to user requests.

AHRQ USHIK is a metadata registry of health-care-related standards, their data elements, and metadata funded and directed by AHRQ, in partnership with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Veterans Administration. USHIK’s Meaningful Use portal is a comprehensive resource for accessing an organized presentation of meaningful use clinical quality measures and value sets and is unique in allowing users to compare present, past, and future proposed versions of meaningful use quality measures and value sets. USHIK allows researchers to browse, compare, and synchronize diverse data sets in order to promote interoperability, uniformity, and comparability of health data.

Select to access USHIK: http://ushik.ahrq.gov/ 

CMS has developed guidance for understanding and using the final CQMs, as well as human readable files, and e-specifications. They are also the source for CQMs in USHIK. Select to access CMS CQM information: http://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Legislation/EHRIncentivePrograms/ClinicalQualityMeasures.html

 The value sets available in USHIK are from the National Library of Medicine.

Select to access NLM’s Value Set information http://vsac.nlm.nih.gov