Thank you for your inquiry regarding CMS996v5: Appropriate Treatment for ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) Patients in the Emergency Department (ED). The CMS996v5 measure specification for the 2025 reporting period excludes encounters in which a patient experienced cardiopulmonary arrest, including cardiac arrest, respiratory arrest, ventricular fibrillation (V-fib), ventricular tachycardia (V-tach), pulseless electrical activity (PEA), within 24 hours prior to the ED encounter or during the ED encounter, as identified by the ‘Cardiopulmonary Emergency’ value set (OID: 2.16.840.1.113883.3.3157.4048). Therefore, if the diagnosis of non-sustained ventricular tachycardia (NSVT) is documented using any of the codes included in this value set (e.g., ICD-10 codes I47.20 or I47.29), the ED encounter will be excluded from the measure. A full list of codes in the ‘Cardiopulmonary Emergency’ value set is available through the Value Set Authority Center (VSAC): https://vsac.nlm.nih.gov/valueset/2.16.840.1.113883.3.3157.4048/expansion/Latest . Please note, you may need to create a free account to view these codes. Since it is not the intent of the measure to exclude encounters where the patient experienced NSVT, but did not have any form of cardiopulmonary arrest, clinical codes for NSVT were removed from this value set, starting with version 6 of the measure specifications for the 2026 reporting period. For more details on this change, please see the CMS996v6 technical release notes, available in the eCQI Resource Center website: https://ecqi.healthit.gov/ecqm/hosp-outpt/2026/cms0996v6?qt-tabs_measure=release-notes .

The use of non‑specific NSVT impacts the team by increasing clarification workload, creating variability in documentation and coding, and limiting the reliability of quality data, highlighting the need for clearer documentation standards and shared clinical understanding.