Alignment and Simplification of Quality Measures

On February 16, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), as part of a broad Core Quality Measures Collaborative of health care system participants, released seven sets of clinical quality measures. These measures support multi-payer alignment, for the first time, on core measures primarily for physician quality programs. Partners in the Collaborative recognize that physicians and other clinicians must currently report multiple quality measures to different entities. Measure requirements are often not aligned among payers, which has resulted in confusion and complexity for reporting providers. To address this problem, CMS, commercial plans, Medicare and Medicaid managed care plans, purchasers, physician and other care provider organizations, and consumers worked together through the Collaborative to identify core sets of quality measures that payers have committed to using for reporting as soon as feasible.
The core measures are in the following seven sets:

• Accountable Care Organizations, Patient Centered Medical Homes, and Primary Care
• Cardiology
• Gastroenterology
• HIV and Hepatitis C
• Medical Oncology
• Obstetrics and Gynecology
• Orthopedics

For more information:

• Fact Sheet: Core Quality Measures Collaborative Release
• Core Measures webpage