WASHINGTON – A Department of Health and Human Services advisory panel wants feedback from the public about concepts it has developed for clinical quality measures for meaningful use in 2013 and 2015.
The Health IT Policy Committee's quality measures workgroup is drawing up recommendations for new measures that will take advantage of the evolving health IT infrastructure for Stage 2 and Stage 3 meaningful use requirements, said David Lansky, the workgroup chairman.
Lansky is also chief executive officer of the Pacific Business Group on Health.
The panel's task is to distinguish what is missing in the existing quality measures for 2011, and come up with new and different, broadly applicable measures to advance the improvement of healthcare quality and efficiency through the adoption of certified electronic health records.
The workgroup has identified measure concepts around the areas of patient and family engagement, clinical appropriateness and efficiency, care coordination, patient safety, and population and public health. These include measures for reconciliation of medications when patients are treated by multiple providers, adverse drug event reporting and for use of services to promote health lifestyles.
"These comments are important to shaping public policy on the future of e-measure development," Lansky said Dec. 6 in the request for comments.
The panel requests that comments be filed by Dec. 23 on its list of measure concepts and to offer detailed examples of measures that are relevant to each concept, he said.
The measure examples should be able to be built into electronic health record systems; apply across multiple types of providers, care settings and conditions; and support potential improvements in population health. The measures should also support assessment of patient health risks, evaluation of changes in outcomes, and enable the evaluation of longitudinal and condition-specific episodes of care.
