CMS, AHIP Announce Alignment and Simplification of Quality Measures

On February 16, the Core Quality Measures Collaborative—comprised of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), which represents most insurers in the U.S., and other stakeholders including the AAFP—announced an historic agreement to streamline and standardize quality measures of physician performance in support of transitioning to value-based care under the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA).

Currently, physicians must report on different measures varied across insurers, which is burdensome for physicians and has demonstrated little to no improvements in outcomes. Under the new framework, physicians will report to all private insurers on seven groups of measures, with each measure focusing on a type of care: cardiology, gastroenterology, HIV and hepatitis C, oncology, obstetrics and gynecology, orthopedics, and primary care. Just 21 measures are included in the primary care group, down from the current 50 to 100 measures that primary care physicians report on today.

Core measures for other types of care are being evaluated and the groups of measures can change as new metrics are developed.  

Click here to read more from the AAFP.