CMS offering $30 million in grant funding to improve quality measures

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is providing up to $30 million in grant funding to develop partnerships with health systems, clinicians and others to improve measures in the quality payment program of MACRA.

CMS will provide funding and technical assistance in these cooperative agreements to address measure gaps.

[Also: CMS streamlines quality reporting for MACRA]

The gap areas include, but are not limited to, orthopedic surgery, pathology, radiology, mental health and substance use conditions, oncology, palliative care, and emergency medicine.

Initial priority areas are for clinical care, safety, care coordination, patient and caregiver experience, population health and prevention and affordable care.

Organizations that may receive the funds include clinical specialty societies, clinical professional organizations, patient advocacy organizations, educational institutions, independent research organizations, and health systems.

[Also: CMS must beef up its IT and guidance for clinicians to make MACRA work, OIG says]

Focusing on patient perspectives will ensure measures focus on what is important to patients and drive the improvement of patient outcomes, CMS said.
To accomplish this, the cooperative agreements prioritize the development of outcome measures, including patient reported outcome and functional status measures, patient experience measures, care coordination measures, and measures of appropriate use of services, including measures of overuse.

[Also: CMS awards $100 million for MACRA quality payment program training]

Other measures for improvement in the CMS Quality Measure Development Plan include clinician engagement, burden minimization, consumer-informed decisions, critical measure gaps, quality measure alignment, consumer-informed decisions, clinician engagement, and efficient data collection that minimizes the healthcare provider burden.

Twitter: @SusanJMorse
Email the writer: susan.morse@himssmedia.com