One of the most confusing areas of the final meaningful use rule has been a little thing called clinical quality measures (CQMs).
Your peers hit CMS again and again with questions on what these are, how many of them must be met, and how they fit into the total number of meaningful use requirements needed to secure up to $40,000 in EHR incentives.
Here's how this works, in a nutshell: CQMs are statistics that you report to CMS, or in some cases to state medical agencies. Reporting them is a meaningful use requirement. A certain number of CQMs must be reported to meet a larger core meaningful use requirement.
Here's a recap on core meaningful use requirements:
- You must meet a total of 20 meaningful use requirements
- Fifteen of these 20 are called "core" requirements, which is CMS's way of saying that they're mandatory
- Five of these 20 can be chosen by you from a "menu" of 10 requirements
- One of the 15 core requirements is that the provider completes a certain number of CQMs, choosing the ones that are relevant to their practice
- You don't have to report irrelevant CQMs, in fact you may have no relevant CQMs during phase I of the EHR Incentive Program, but you can still earn the bonus money
Examples of CQMs include items like "percentage of patients aged 18 years and older with a diagnosis of COPD and who have a FEV1/FVC less than 70% and have symptoms who were prescribed a bronchodilater." If your practice is, for example, a dermatology practice that will never treat a patient for chronic obstructiev pulmonary disease (COPD), you wouldn't need to report this particular CQM. You could choose others -- we outline precisely the number of CQMs that must be met in a larger Part B News story titled "Full EHR bonus still open to docs who can't meet any clinical quality measures."
We'll continue covering the messier and more confusing components of meaningful use in future Part B News stories, so stay tuned -- and don't hesitate to suggest topics for coverage to us, especially if you find them difficult to understand!