On February 16, 2016, the Core Quality Measures Collaborative, a collaboration between CMS, the trade association America’s Health Insurance Plans, primary care and physician specialty societies, and consumer and employer groups, announced agreement on core performance measure sets for select areas of practice, including Accountable Care Organizations and Patient-Centered Medical Homes, Cardiology, Gastroenterology, HIV/Hepatitis C, Medical Oncology, Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Orthopedics.
In recent years, the number of performance measures has increased significantly, and there has been little overlap and coordination among the various organizations establishing measures. The core measure sets announced today are intended to promote consistency and alignment of quality measures for physician services.
The Core Quality Measures Collaborative worked for 18 months to build consensus around measures to establish broadly agreed upon core measure sets that could be harmonized across both commercial and government payers, which will add focus to quality improvement efforts, reduce the reporting burden of quality measures, and offer consumers actionable information for decision-making.
The development of the core quality measure sets is part of a broader effort by CMS to align measures across public programs and is informing CMS’s implementation of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). More information on the measures and the Agency’s implementation plans for the measures is available on the CMS website.
