eCQMs and Meaningful Measures Week 6

 Meaningful Measures and eCQMs...How can we improve patient safety?

    This week in the blog, we will explore electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs) and Meaningful Measures and how they can help ensure patient safety. As future FNPs, we need to be mindful of all the ways we have to protect our patients, not just their personal health information (PHI) by ensuring HIPAA is followed, but also ensuring patients are receiving quality care from your practice, as well as trying to mitigate care from outside providers. Anyway, we as providers can help build up our patients' trust and engagement, which will not only foster a more meaningful provider-patient relationship but will also engage patients in their care and help them play a vital role in their healthcare team. 

    So, what are eCQMs, and how can we as FNPs utilize them in our practice? eCQMs are measures specified in a standard electronic format using data electronically obtained from electronic health records (EHRs) and/or health information technology (IT) systems to assess the quality of health care provided (eCQUI Resource Center , 2025). They can also use clinical data enabling more accurate assessment of treatment outcomes by measured entities to assess the outcomes of treatment by measured entities, use electronic standards, which help reduce the burden of manual abstraction and reporting for measured entities, and foster the goal of access to real-time data for point of care quality improvement and clinical decision support(eCQUI Resource Center , 2025).  Reports of eCQMs are given to CMS, The Joint Commission, other federal health agencies, as well as commercial insurance payers in programs that track and/or reimburse measured entities based on quality reporting or quality performance (eCQUI Resource Center , 2025). When it comes down to it, the higher rated a provider, the better they are going to get reimbursed by CMS and commercial insurance companies; thus, eCQMs give providers an added incentive to provide patients with the best possible care they can. Another way eCQMs help protect patients is that if providers are receiving poor ratings on their eCQMs, they are more likely to be investigated and then looked into why they are providing poor care.  eCQMs can also be utilized by hospitals, providers, and healthcare organizations to improve patient care by analyzing patient data and tracking trends in healthcare (Bansal, 2025). 

    Another initiative by CMS is Meaningful Measures, which was initially introduced in 2017 to reduce the number of Medicare quality measures and ease the burden on measured entities (CMS.gov, 2017). Since its initiation in 2017 Meaningful Measures has reduced the number of Medicare quality measures by 18 percent, saving more than 3 million hours of time and a projected $128 million (CMS.gov, 2017). The goal of Meaningful Measure 2.0 is to digitally allow clinicians to upload their quality once and utilize its data in multiple ways, accelerate the initiative to being fulling electronic, and utilize AI to analyze data and identify areas of harm before it reaches the patient (CMS.gov, 2017). These different initiatives both aid FNPs because they not only help maintain an excellent level of quality patient care, but also help to maintain the proper levels of quality reimbursements.  Patients want to trust that they are receiving quality care from their provider, and by utilizing eCQMs and meaningful measures, patients have another level of reassurance. 

References

Bansal, N. (2025, February 19). eCQM Explained: Key Measures, CMS Updates, and How It Compares to Traditional CQM & HEDIS - Following Healthcare. Following Healthcare. https://followinghealthcare.com/ecqm/

CMS.gov. (2017). Meaningful Measures 2.0: Moving from Measure Reduction to Modernization | CMS. Cms.gov. https://www.cms.gov/medicare/quality/cms-national-quality-strategy/meaningful-measures-20-moving-measure-reduction-modernization

eCQUI Resource Center . (2025, March 20). Get Started with eCQMs | eCQI Resource Center. Ecqi.healthit.gov. https://ecqi.healthit.gov/ecqms?qt-tabs_ecqm=about-ecqms