Access the Final Report: eMeasure Learning Collaborative: Advancing the Adoption, Implementation, and Use of eMeasures
Overview
The federal government is increasingly embracing electronically-enabled performance measurement as a less-burdensome approach to gathering and publicly reporting performance information. Accordingly, federal contractors and other measure developers are now retooling existing quality measures into an electronic format to support Meaningful Use, value-based purchasing, and other innovative programs.1, 2 How to best implement such eMeasures, however, remains challenging.
The eMeasure Learning Collaborative seeks to create a learning environment for advancing knowledge and promoting best practices related to developing and implementing eMeasures. By bringing together stakeholders from across the quality enterprise, the Collaborative will help promote more efficient and standardized adoption of eMeasures.
Specifically, the Collaborative will facilitate a public forum focused on:
- Advancing knowledge and practice in properly implementing eMeasures across all settings of healthcare;3
- Driving greater uptake of eMeasures and movement toward use of an electronic platform for quality measurement;
- Promoting awareness, providing education, and enabling understanding of best practices with eMeasure implementation across various healthcare settings; and,
- Encouraging knowledge sharing between all stakeholders involved in quality and performance measurement, thereby expediting advancement in electronic quality measurement.
NQF is eager to engage with relevant stakeholders – measure developers, health IT vendors, clinical professionals, and quality improvement organizations, among others – to advance the mission of the eMeasure Learning Collaborative.
For more information, please contact Christopher Millet at 202-783-1300 or via e-mail at cmillet@qualityforum.org.
Additional Resources:
Footnotes:
1 In 2009, HHS, motivated by The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act,3 requested that NQF "retool," or convert, 113 NQF-endorsed® measures from traditional paper-based measures to electronic measures, or "eMeasures," to be compatible with or readable by EHR systems.
2 Meaningful Use is identified by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology as standards and certification criteria for the certification of EHR technology, so eligible professionals and hospitals may be assured that the systems they adopt are capable of performing the required functions. More information can be found at http://healthit.hhs.gov/portal/server.pt/community/healthit_hhs_gov__meaningful_use_announcement/2996.
3 Electronic measures (eMeasures) are standardized performance measures in an electronic format. eMeasures can promote greater consistency in measure development and in measuring and comparing performance results. They also can provide more exact requirements about where information should be collected, and drive greater standardization across the measures and greater confidence in comparing outcomes and provider performance.
