ONC Health IT Certification Program Updates (11/17/2017)

2017 ONC Annual Meeting

ONC’s 2017 Annual Meeting, Tackling Barriers to Interoperability and Usability, is right around the corner! Learn more about keynote speakers Eric Dishman, director of the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program, Seema Verma, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and Dr. Don Rucker, national coordinator for health IT. We will we offer a webcast for the plenary sessions on both days, as well as the Trusted Exchange Framework & Common Agreement session on day 1. More details on accessing the webcast will be available soon.

Register: ONC Annual Meeting
Date: Thursday, November 30 – Friday, December 1, 2017
Location: Washington Hilton, 1919 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20009

If you are unable to register by Monday, November 20, onsite registration will be available at no cost.

CMS Announces Transition of Electronic Clinical Quality Measures (eCQMs) to Clinical Quality Language (CQL) for the CY2019 Reporting/Performance Periods

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced on October 31, 2017 that CMS quality program electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs) will be transitioned to use the HL7 Clinical Quality Language (CQL) standard (CQL Release 1, Standard for Trial Use (STU) 2) for logic expression. CQL unifies the logic expression for eCQMs and Clinical Decision Support (CDS), and provides the ability to better express logic defining measure populations to improve the accuracy and clarity of eCQMs.

The transition to reporting CQL-based measures will begin with the calendar year (CY) 2019 reporting period for Eligible Hospitals and Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs), and CY 2019 performance period for Eligible Professionals (EPs) and Eligible Clinicians.

Additional details on this announcement can be found on the eCQI Resource Center webpage. 

Resources to prepare for CQL- based measure reporting

Health IT developers are encouraged to install and self-test using Cypress or the Pre-Submission Validation Application (PSVA) in preparation for reporting CQL-based measures beginning with the calendar year (CY) 2019 reporting period for Eligible Hospitals and Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) and CY 2019 performance period for Eligible Professionals (EPs) and Eligible Clinicians. To support the transition, CMS will publish CQL-based eCQMs in spring 2018. The beta release of Cypress v4 with support for CQL-based eCQMs will be made available in spring 2018 with a full release in summer 2018.

PSVA is a downloadable tool that operates on a user's system allowing submitters to catch and correct errors prior to data submission to CMS.  The application provides validation feedback within the submitter's system and allows valid files to be separated and submitted while invalid files are identified for error correction. Users must login to the QualityNet Secure Portal with valid user credentials to download the PSVA tool. After the initial PSVA tool download, the user will install the PSVA tool in their client environment.

For additional information on CQL and QDM resources, please visit the eCQI Resource Center. All questions related to CQL can be submitted to  the ONC CQL Issue Tracker.

Test Method Updates

Recently Updated Test Data

2015 Edition Test Data
Criterion Number	Criterion Title	Details
§ 170.315(g)(2) Test Data Set 2 - EP/EC	Automated measure calculation	Updated Required Test 3 test data note 6, Required Test 4 test data note 10, Required Test 5 test data note 8, and Required Test 6 test data note 5 to state that “it is up the discretion of the ATL to not test TIN B/Provider 1 and TIN A/Provider 2” not “it is up the discretion of the ATL to not test TIN B/Provider 1 and TIN B/Provider 2”.  Updated General Note 3 to clarify that health IT developers must demonstrate the ability to record both methods.

For additional information on the 2015 Edition requirements, please visit the ONC Standards and Certification Regulation webpage. 

Questions may be directed to the ONC Health IT Certification Program via email at: ONC.Certification@hhs.gov