Accelerating Clinical Quality Measures for the HITECH Act and the Affordable Care Act
Synopsis
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) in partnership with CMS would like to accelerate the development of new clinical quality measures that incorporate information available in electronic health records to monitor the impact of the implementation of the HITECH Act (ARRA) and the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Description
The delivery and payment reform provisions of the Affordable Care Act are transitioning the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to value based reimbursement in an effort to achieve the three-part aim of better care and health while reducing costs through improvement. Clinical quality measures help HHS understand the impact of its programs and policies and to plan target areas of future focus. HHS is investing electronic health record deployment and use in the US. With this transition, there is considerable interest and promise in transitioning the clinical quality measures from predominantly pre-EHR measures to leverage the enhanced information found in EHRs. Clinical quality measures are created in a production system- a series of experts following predictable steps with hand offs and dependencies. Currently the creation of a clinical quality measure from identification of a high priority health topic to deployment is a 3 to 5 year process.
One of the most successful tools from manufacturing industries to achieve improved efficiencies is the lean production system. Lean has also become a key tool for quality improvement in health care delivery. Lean is way of analyzing and organizing complex processes with many steps and people involved in a process- especially a production process. ONC and CMS are looking for a Lean expert to lead a value stream analysis of the clinical quality e-measure production and to guide ONC and CMS through the work of improving efficiency of the production of quality measures.
Skill Sets for External Fellow(s)
The idea fellow will have extensive experience in:
Leading organizations through quality improvement change processes
- Teaching lean methodologies
- Analyzing processes
- Coaching teams and team leads through change management
Host Innovation Fellows:
- Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM (nominating official), National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
- Jacob Reider, MD, Acting Chief Medical Officer, ONC
- Kevin Larsen, MD, Medical Director of Meaningful Use, ONC