Now Accepting Public Comments on the Draft 2019 CMS QRDA I Implementation Guide for Hospital Quality Reporting

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has posted the Draft 2019 CMS Quality Reporting Document Architecture (QRDA) Category I Implementation Guide (IG) for Hospital Quality Reporting (HQR) for public comment in JIRA, ticket number QRDA-660. A JIRA account is required to comment. The public comment period starts on February 26, 2018 and ends on March 21, 2018. Please note, this is a draft document and the contents are subject to change.

The 2019 CMS QRDA I Implementation Guide for HQR outlines requirements for eligible hospitals (EHs) and critical access hospitals (CAHs) to report electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs) for the calendar year 2019 reporting period.

The draft 2019 CMS QRDA I IG for HQR contains the following high-level changes as compared with the 2018 CMS QRDA I IG:
• The 2019 CMS QRDA I IG is based on the Health Level Seven (HL7) QRDA Category I IG, Release 1, STU 5.
• The HL7 IG includes template updates to align with Quality Data Model (QDM) version 5.3 Annotated.

Additional QRDA-related resources, as well as current and past implementation guides, are found on the eCQI Resource Center QRDA page. For questions related to this guidance, the QRDA Implementation Guides or Schematrons, visit the ONC QRDA JIRA Issue Tracker.