RECOVERY - PO for the HITECH Hospital Clinical Quality Measures Electronic Specifications Review and Modification

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, Title XIII of Division A and Title IV of Division B of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) (Pub. L. 111-5) was enacted on February 17, 2009 to improve health care quality, safety, and efficiency through the promotion of health information technology (HIT) and electronic health information exchange. The HITECH Act also amended several sections of the Social Security Act and in doing so established the availability of incentive payments to eligible professionals, eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals (CAHs) to promote the adoption and meaningful use of interoperable HIT. Title IV, Division B of the HITECH Act establishes incentive payments under the Medicare and Medicaid programs for certain professionals and hospitals that meaningfully use certified electronic health record (EHR) technology. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) was charged with developing the Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive programs and determining the clinical quality measures (CQMs) for reporting from EHRs that meet one of the criteria for meaningful use. In order for the CQM data to be abstracted from the EHR, a set of inpatient CQMs were retooled into electronic specification format in anticipation of the healthcare industry incorporating widespread interoperable exchange of electronic data. In September 2008, CMS engaged the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP), through its partner Office of the National Coordinator (ONC), to retool this set of existing clinical quality measures to use EHR generated data. The HITECH Act requires quality measures to be reported out of electronic health records. This submission process is a new and emerging course of action that requires standards and context applied to patient care data that in many cases have never existed in the past. As we work through these processes, CMS has received public comments and validated that the hospital clinical quality measures electronic specifications contain errors which require review of the specifications and modification of these errors in order to satisfy the HITECH reporting requirements of the CQM data for hospitals. For this effort, CMS will obtain services for the review and modification, as necessary, for the errors contained in the eight HITSP clinical quality measures electronic specifications which are used for hospitals in the ARRA HITEH Incentive Program. The Government will not entertain correspondence related to this posted notice.