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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in its proposed rule to make changes to inpatient prospective patient systems for acute care hospitals in 2010, calls for testing the submission of quality measures derived from electronic health records. That's a good idea, according to Premier Inc., but the San Diego-based provider alliance has some concerns.

"CMS' proposed testing of electronic health record (EHR)-based submission of measures is a step in the right direction," Premier said in a letter commenting on the proposed rule. "But the proposal builds on the existing (reporting) system rather than leveraging EHRs' potential to improve quality and efficiency. For this approach to be successful, standards need to define key clinical concepts in a way that is transferable from system to system, and then used to measure compliance with evidence-based care."

 "While this process needs to evolve over time, we recognize that CMS needs to create a system to accept electronic transmissions from EHRs expeditiously," the comment letter continued. "Thus, we support the testing of electronic submission of a subset of both the Stroke and venous thromboembolism (VTE) measures from EHRs in FY 2010."

Premier recommended not testing the reporting of certain emergency department measures as the information often is housed in outpatient information systems not linked to inpatient systems. Premier's letter also covered such areas as MS-DRG documentation and coding, capital payments and other issues related to quality measures reporting. For the complete letter, click here.

--Joseph Goedert