Sunsetting eCQM Certification
Lets New Options Shine
December 13, 2022 · Andy Reynolds
NCQA is closing the Electronic Clinical Quality Measurement (eCQM) Certification program we launched in 2016 to make way for new programs that reflect and reinforce the evolution toward digital quality measurement.
Five years was enough for eCQM Cert to build the foundation for more sophisticated services that help people who provide and pay for care to trust quality data. As NCQA makes quality measurement more digital and more capable, other services build on the transformations eCQM advanced. These include:
- HEDIS Measure Certification: Attracting new interest from many firms that earned eCQM Cert (and as HEDIS measures are increasingly used in different parts of the health care system), HEDIS Measure Cert is how organizations show they’re ready to report HEDIS results.
- Data Aggregator Validation: This program goes “upstream” of the HEDIS Audit process to check data where it accumulates, such as at Health Information Exchanges. Almost 40% of organizations that hold eMeasure Certification have earned—or are on their way to earning—a spot on our list of firms that hold a Data Aggregator Validation status.
eMeasure Cert: A Full, Productive Life
Milestones in the lifecycle of eCQM Certification were frequent, including the program’s:
- Pilot and then preview in 2015.
- Launch and first customers in 2016.
- Press attention in 2018, when NCQA won approval from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology as an eMeasure testing lab.
eCQM Cert has ceded the spotlight to Data Aggregator and HEDIS Measure Certification in recent years because those programs do even more to advance digital quality.
Key backers or builders of eCQM Cert are designing and driving the adoption of those other programs. These leaders include:
- Brad Ryan, an Apervita co-founder (and eCQM fan) when we launched eCQM Certification, and now NCQA’s Chief Product Officer.
- Anne Smith, the Assistant Vice President of Digital Measure Engineering who helped launch eCQM Cert and now is deep into making digital measures.
- Suzanne Wallen our Assistant Vice President of Measure Certification who runs next-generation programs.
The Bottom Line
- People don’t get to retire when they’re six. But in the fast-moving world of digital technology, five years can be a full, productive life—as it has been for eCQM Certification.
- Check back on our blog or contact us to learn how we’re building on eCQM Certification by doing new things to help people who provide or pay for care trust their quality data.
