Understanding Quality Measures for Meaningful Use

Posted by David Lischner on 3 November 2011

As you know, Quality Measures were primarily designed for general practitioners and hospitals, not for psychiatrists. As a result many of the existing quality measures will not apply to your practice. Over time, we expect NQF, the body that creates quality measures, to add more measures that are relevant to an outpatient psychiatric practice. As this occurs, we’ll shift our focus to supporting those measures.

Currently, you are not being evaluated on what you record in Quality Measures (or the quality of your care), but rather whether you can successfully report using certified technology. CMS has been very explicit that “0” denominators are acceptable when reporting on quality measures. What’s more, the denominators and numerators are automatically calculated in the Vālant EMR. So, you can rest assured that the Vālant EMR makes it simple to attest. Overall, reporting quality measures is really quite easy when it comes to demonstrating meaningful use.

For a breakdown of the steps to Meaningful Use, visit our Meaningful Use Monday section.

For futher explanation from CME, click here.

Tags: Quality Measures, Meaningful Use