QUESTION: CMS169 Initial Patient Population
‘In order to satisfactory report the initial patient population of CMS 169, we need to report all the patients that are 18 years or older prior to the start of the measurement period.’ However, if the initial Population criteria is querying for all patients who are 18 years of age or older prior to the start of the measurement period, the counts would be extremely high as it would count all patients based on the age criterion only in the initial population. This could mean there may be thousands of patients meeting this count, as this includes patient who many not have been seen by the provider for the measure reporting period. Thus, we are unsure if this was a typo in the measure specification. As we have reviewed all other EP CQMs and have not found any other measures that queried for just a specific set of patient population based on the age criterion without also looking for an encounter or occurrence of an event or condition. We believe there should be more filters added in the initial patient population criterion as with all other EPs CQMs so that the measure initial patient population counts are a better reflection of the target population. Please clarify