The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) invites electronic health record (EHR) vendors and interested parties to review and provide feedback on draft Quality Data Model (QDM)-based electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM) specifications, including draft logic and header changes, under consideration for CMS quality reporting and payment programs.

This opportunity will allow CMS to learn from EHR vendors and interested parties who have the technical ability to review the draft measures in the Clinical Quality Language (CQL) standard for logic expression and test the Health Quality Measures Format (HQMF) code by directly consuming machine readable XML files for eCQMs. Testing will help CMS to identify instances in which the XML code produces errors so that issues can be resolved prior to posting the fully specified measures in spring 2026.

The draft measures in HTML, XML, and JSON formats are available December 5, 2025 through December 19, 2025 on the ASTP/ONC Project Tracking System eCQM Issue Tracker via the following Jira tickets:

• CQM-8266: Annual Update for the 2027 Performance Period: Draft Preview of Eligible Clinician eCQMs
• CQM-8267: Annual Update for the 2027 Reporting Period: Draft Preview of Hospital - Inpatient eCQMs
• CQM-8268: Annual Update for the 2027 Reporting Period: Draft Preview of Hospital - Outpatient eCQMs

Report questions and comments regarding the draft eCQM specifications via the eCQM Issue Tracker tickets listed above.

The fully specified eCQMs will be available on the eCQI Resource Center in spring 2026. Measures will not be eligible for the 2027 reporting/performance period unless and until they are proposed and finalized through notice-and-comment rulemaking for each applicable program. The eCQMs will be expressed using CQL logic and will continue to use the Quality Data Model (QDM) as the conceptual model to express clinical concepts contained within eCQMs. Refer to the QDM v5.6 and CQL standard v1.5.3 to better understand how they work together to provide eCQMs that are human readable, yet structured for electronic processing.

For More Information

To find out more about eCQMs and CQL, visit the eCQI Resource Center.