The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is updating the 93 electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs) used in the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs for eligible professionals (EPs) and eligible hospitals (EHs). The updated 93 eCQMs will be posted in Spring 2016 and will reflect version 4.2 of the Quality Data Model (QDM).
Prior to posting the eCQMs, CMS is providing vendors an opportunity to review draft measures that include value set, logic and header changes. Starting February 19, 2016, draft measure packages will be available on the JIRA CQM project for EH (https://jira.oncprojectracking.org/browse/CQM-1865) and EP measures (https://jira.oncprojectracking.org/browse/CQM-1866).

This is an opportunity for CMS to receive feedback from EHR vendors who have the technical capability to test Health Quality Measures Format (HQMF) code by directly consuming machine readable XML files for eCQMs. Testing will help CMS to identify instances where XML code produces errors so that issues can be resolved before posting the updated measures in Spring 2016. The measures in both HTML and XML formats will be available through March 3, 2016. Questions and comments on the draft sample measures can be posted directly on JIRA.