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Acknowledging that a lack of alignment across the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ quality programs has contributed to challenges for clinicians and health insurers, the leaders of several CMS centers are proposing a “Universal Foundation” of quality measures that will apply to as many CMS quality-rating and value-based care programs as possible.
Published Feb. 1 in the New England Journal of Medicine, the essay’s authors include Douglas B. Jacobs, M.D., M.P.H.; Michelle Schreiber, M.D.; Meena Seshamani, M.D., Ph.D.; Daniel Tsai, B.A.; Elizabeth Fowler, Ph.D., J.D.; and Lee A. Fleisher, M.D.
The authors note that across 20 quality programs, although some of its quality measures are consistent, many are not. They note that other insurers often use the same quality measures as CMS to adjust clinician reimbursement as part of value-based arrangements — although some insurers use different or modified measures, which has also contributed to measure proliferation.