The Annual Call for MIPS Quality Measures is Now Open

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) invites you to submit Quality measures for consideration for future years of the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). The MIPS Annual Call for Quality Measures process allows clinicians, professional associations and medical societies that represent eligible clinicians, researchers, consumer groups and others to identify and submit measure recommendations in the following domains:

Patient safety
Person and caregiver-centered experience and outcomes
Communication and care coordination
Effective clinical care
Community/population health
Efficiency and cost reduction

How to Submit Measures

If you’re interested in proposing new Quality measures for MIPS, you can do so through the ONC-JIRA system. Visit the pre-rulemaking website on CMS.gov to learn more about JIRA and how to submit measures for consideration.

Measures submitted during the Call for Measures period must:

Be fully developed measures (testing data must accompany submission)
Fulfill a clinical performance gap and is supported by a scientific evidence
Be reportable via Clinical Quality Measures (CQMs), Medicare Part B claims or as an eCQM (electronic clinical quality measure)
Valid and reliable at the individual clinician level
Be ready for implementation at the time of submission
Not the same as existing quality measure in MIPS

Submission must also include a completed Peer Reviewed Journal Article Form, which is available in the 2019 Call for Quality Measures zip file.

JIRA will accept proposed Quality measure submissions through June 3, 2019.

Measures that are accepted as part of the Call for Quality Measures will be added to the 2019 Measures Under Consideration (MUC) List. The finalized MUC List will be available by December 1, 2019 and reviewed at the National Quality Forum’s Annual Measure Application Partnership meeting in December. CMS will then decide which measures will be considered for future rulemaking.

A list of proposed quality measures for consideration in the MIPS program for 2020 will be publicly available for comment by July 1, 2019 and a final annual list of 2020 measures for MIPS eligible clinicians will be published in the Federal Register by November 1 of this year.

2019 Call for Quality Measures Webinar

CMS is hosting a webinar to provide an overview of the Call for Quality Measures process and to address questions from participants. Register today to secure your spot.

Title: MIPS Call for Quality Measures

Date: Thursday, March 28

Time: 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. ET

Registration Link: https://engage.vevent.com/rt/cms/index.jsp?seid=1474

For More Information

View the 2019 Call for Quality Measures and Activities zip file on the QPP Resource Library.

Now Available: Visit the eCQM Issue Tracker to Review eCQM Draft Measure Packages for 2020 Reporting/Performance Periods

CMS invites vendors and stakeholders to review and provide feedback on draft electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM) packages that include logic and header changes for eCQMs under consideration for CMS quality reporting and payment programs.

This opportunity will allow CMS to learn from Electronic Health Record (EHR) vendors who have the technical capabilities to review the draft measures in the Clinical Quality Language (CQL) standard for logic expression and test the Health Quality Measures Format (HQMF) code by directly consuming machine readable XML files for eCQMs. Testing will help CMS to identify instances in which the XML code produces errors so that issues can be resolved prior to posting the fully specified measures this spring. The draft measures in HTML, XML, and JSON formats are available March 1, 2019 through March 21, 2019, on the ONC Project Tracking System (JIRA) eCQM Issue Tracker via the following tickets:

CQM-3440: Annual Update for the 2020 Reporting Period: Draft Preview of Eligible Hospital and Critical Access Hospital eCQMs
CQM-3441: Annual Update for the 2020 Performance Period: Draft Preview of Eligible Professional and Eligible Clinician eCQMs

Please report questions and comments regarding the draft measure packages to the eCQM Issue Tracker tickets listed above.

Updating eCQMs for 2020 Reporting/Performance Periods

CMS is updating Eligible Hospital/Critical Access Hospital and Eligible Professional/Eligible Clinician eCQMs for potential inclusion in the following programs:

The Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program (IQR);

The Medicare and Medicaid Promoting Interoperability Programs for eligible hospitals, critical access hospitals and eligible professionals; and
The Quality Payment Program (QPP): The Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and Alternative Payment Models (APMs).

The updated eCQMs will be available on the eCQI Resource Center in spring 2019. The measures will be expressed using CQL logic and will continue to use the Quality Data Model (QDM) as the conceptual model to express clinical concepts contained within quality measures. Refer to the QDM v5.4 and current version of the CQL standard to better understand how they work together to provide eCQMs that are human readable, yet structured for electronic processing. Measures will not be eligible for 2020 reporting unless and until they are proposed and finalized through notice-and-comment rulemaking for each applicable program.

For More Information

To find out more about eCQMs and CQL, visit the eCQI Resource Center.