A federal watchdog wants the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to get better at ensuring its quality measures actually match its strategic objectives aimed at improving care quality and reducing “unnecessary” burdens for providers.
The recommendation was made in a new report by the Government Accountability Office that reviewed how the agency develops and uses quality measures used to assess the care of Medicare providers and funds quality measurement activities.
The report also found that CMS should maintain more complete information on how it funds its quality measurement activities, and develop and use performance indicators to evaluate the agency’s progress in achieving its objectives. The Department of Health and Human Services agreed with each of the recommendations.
“CMS’ decisions to select quality measures or develop new ones have a major influence over what is known about the quality of care provided to patients, and over how healthcare providers are paid,” the report stated. “Providers and others have questioned some of the measures CMS has chosen to use in Medicare.”
CMS’ “Meaningful Measures” initiative sets strategic objectives to guide its development and use of quality measures, the report noted. The objectives focus on ways to produce substantial improvement in healthcare and reduce provider burden associated with reporting on information on the objectives.
LeadingAge recently encouraged CMS to address “empty quality measures,” such as the long-stay antipsychotic medication measure for nursing homes, while submitting feedback to the agency on how to improve its “Patients Over Paperwork Initiative” and reduce provider burden.
The provider advocate said that burdens from “unnecessary and duplicative assessments, empty quality measures, inadequate health information exchange, inconsistent survey and certification processes, and problematic audit and claims processes” are several issues that keep providers away from patients.
