National Quality Forum Measure Authoring Tool

Here is this week’s post from the HIMSS NQF Task Force.  Jonathan French, Director, HIMSS Healthcare Information Systems

by Cecilia Backman, CPHQ, MBA, RHIA                                                                                     Member, HIMSS NQF Task Force          

Following enactment of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act in 2009, the Department of Health & Human Services requested that the National Quality Forum (NQF) retool 113 NQF-endorsed measures from a paper-based measure to an electronic format so that the measures could be readable by electronic health record (EHR) systems. This request resulted in the creation of a web-based, publicly available, non-proprietary Measure Authoring Tool (MAT) to be used by those within the healthcare industry who wish to create measures. 

The MAT is designed to standardize measure formats and content so that there is consistency in the way the measures are interpreted and used, and to assure compatibility across different clinical systems.  It is believed that the use of the MAT will improve the accuracy of measurement and prove to be more cost-effective and less burdensome for providers by allowing the measures to be embedded within a system for data collection purposes and to eliminate the steps associated with manual data abstraction. 

This process will ultimately facilitate comparison across settings and conditions.  The MAT will also reduce the time it takes to create a measure for use by the healthcare industry.

The MAT works with NQF’s Quality Data Model (QDM) as the QDM provides the grammar needed to express eMeasures.  By using the QDM, an author of a measure can consistently describe that measure.  Industry standard code systems such as ICD (diagnosis and procedures), LOINC (laboratory tests), and RxNorm (medications) are used to express the measure. 

It is NQF’s intent to continue to collaborate with the Office of the National Coordinator’s (ONC’s) Health IT Standards Committee Vocabulary Task Force to identify appropriate code systems to use when structuring measures both now and in the future. As illustrated in an earlier blog on this topic, the specifications of an eMeasure include both a code list (value set) and a code system (taxonomy).

What all this means for the healthcare industry, is that the data within our electronic systems will need to become more highly structured and precise…more attention will need to focus on system design or redesign, in some instances. 

Just like the measures themselves, which have been retooled for electronic use, so will retooling be required of our existing systems.  However, this will free the industry to focus more heavily on the results of measurement rather than the collection of data, which will pave the way for an environment that fosters continuous improvement of healthcare quality.  The slides associated with this topic going into greater detail on the MAT.

In our next post, we will focus on the Quality Positioning System.  The Quality Positioning System concentrates on the development of a Community Reporting Dashboard.  This Dashboard will be used for the public reporting of core measures. 

Please continue to read our posts to stay abreast of how NQF is supporting the industry, the public and the government in improving healthcare quality.

Cecilia Backman, CPHQ, MBA, RHIA                                                                                       Associate Director                                                                                                                       Parkland Health and Hospital System                                                                                            Health Information Management Department                                                          Cecilia.backman@att.net

Each of the HIMSS NQF Task Force blog posts is linked to a slide deck on the topic that elaborates on the importance of the project and connects dots to the other NQF Health IT projects.   All of the blog posts plus the related slide deck are posted on the HIMSS NQF Web site.