CMS rolled back the electronic requirements for hospitals reporting to the IQR program in 2017. They went further by keeping those easier requirements for the 2018 program year as well. They have also relaxed the EHR demands that were scheduled to take effect in 2018. Here are the notable changes to the IQR program.
CMS lowered the number of eCQMs required for 2017 and 2018.
CMS has reduced the required number of eCQMs a hospital must submit to the IQR program in 2017 and 2018 from eight to four eCQMs.
CMS reduced the reporting period for 2017 and 2018.
In addition to reducing the number of eCQMs required for submission, CMS also reduced the number of quarters required. Instead of submitting data from all four quarters of 2017, hospitals may submit one quarter of data from any quarter of 2017. This applies to 2018 as well.
This is a change from the 2017 Final Rule which required eight eCQMs from all four quarters of 2017. This is also a change from the 2018 Proposed Rule released earlier this year, that proposed to scale back the requirements to six eCQMs for two quarters of 2017.
CMS has pushed back the 2015 EHR certification requirement.
One of the biggest concerns for hospitals was the 2018 IQR program requirement to use the 2015 Edition of CEHRT. CMS has modified this requirement. Hospitals will be permitted to continue to use either the 2014 or 2015 edition of CEHRT in 2018. A combination of both editions is also acceptable.
Your EHR must be certified for all 15 eCQMs.
Even though your EHR edition requirements are eased, hospitals must still make sure their EHR technology is certified for all 15 eCQMs that are available. They must also use the most recent version of the eCQM specifications. CMS did clarify that the EHR technology does not need to be recertified each time the eCQMs are updated.
CMS has reduced the number of cases they will audit and included additional exclusions.
In coordination with the reduced number of eCQMs required for submission, CMS has also reduced the number of cases that will be audited for the 2017 reporting year. They will now only audit eight cases for each of the 200 hospitals that are chosen to be audited.
Additionally, they have included additional exclusion criteria. CMS will exclude hospitals that do not have at least five discharges for at least one eCQM submitted. They will also exclude cases with episodes of care longer than 120 days or cases with zero denominators for each measure.