Sometimes when a clinician is taking a patient history, the patient will report diagnostic studies that have been performed in the past. Those procedures should be able to count as exclusions as long as the minimum amount of information needed to ensure the service happened in the required time period is present. For example, a patient reporting the type of colorectal cancer screening, when it was performed (year) and the result or finding, can count towards the Colorectal Cancer Screening measure (CMS130) as long as it is documented in the patient’s medical record and meets the measure requirements (e.g., fecal occult blood test (FOBT) during the measurement period, flexible sigmoidoscopy during the measurement period or the four years prior to the measurement period, colonoscopy during the measurement period or the nine years prior to the measurement period).
There have been some requests to include a patient provider communication variable in several eMeasures to capture these interactions. But in many EHRs data about procedures or diagnostic studies from any source are captured in the same way. Therefore, these services can be reported on a Procedure Performed or Diagnostic Study Performed template.