HHS panel: CMS should reconsider discarded quality measures

Quality measures that a federal advisory panel recommended but which were dropped from proposed rules for the meaningful use of health IT represent a missed opportunity to significantly improve patient care, according to members of the Health IT Policy Committee.

In its proposed rule for meaningful use, announced Dec. 30, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services incorporated many of the suggestions for quality objectives and measures that the Committee recommended be included in the rule. But CMS dropped from the list recommendations that physicians generate progress notes for each patient visit, document the recording of advanced directives for the elderly and develop information resources that are easy for patients to understand. Some committee members believe by rejecting the suggestions CMS is missing opportunities to generate significant and useful care information that will be difficult to obtain otherwise.