New Year, New Look for HEDIS!

January 22, 2025 · NCQA Communications

The HEDIS^® technical specifications are getting a makeover! HEDIS MY 2026 Volume 2: Technical Specifications for Health Plans publication—planned for release in August—will have a new format that aligns with FHIR^® standards and enables future interoperability of HEDIS measures across systems.

Why Is NCQA Making This Change?

Updating the format of the publication supports the transition to digital HEDIS measurement. Aligning the Volume 2 specifications with the format of digital quality measures is an essential step along the path that will help organizations prepare for this change. It will support a future where health plans, providers, public health agencies, vendors and all other HEDIS users will be able to access and view HEDIS measures in the same format—no matter which system they use.

What’s Changing?

We are updating the structure of the HEDIS specifications to a format that aligns with the FHIR measure resource. The new template is similar to the current HEDIS ECDS reported measures.

All the information you need to calculate a HEDIS measure will still be there, but will have a different look.

• General guidelines and clinical evidence-base will be integrated into each measure to allow measure specifications to stand on their own, reducing the need to reference multiple resources.
• Simplified language in measure narratives will help users understand the structure, process or outcome evaluated in the measure.
• Some terminology is changing to be consistent with the FHIR measure resource:
  • “Eligible Population” is replaced with “Initial Population.”
  • “Measurement Year” is replaced with “Measurement Period.”
  • “Member” is replaced with “Person.”
  • “Required exclusions” is replaced with “Denominator exclusions.”

What’s Not Changing?

• The measure intent, data collection requirements or measure calculations are not changing.
• The new format will not impact HEDIS performance results.

Details Coming Soon!

This is the largest formatting update to HEDIS in over 20 years, and NCQA is committed to ensuring that organizations are aware of upcoming changes for MY 2026. We’ll share more about this change in the coming months, so stay tuned!

Learn More

• View a sample HEDIS measure in the new format.
• Visit the Digital Quality Hub to learn more about the transition to digital quality.
• Take our online education course, HEDIS Essentials Update, for a summary of upcoming changes to HEDIS.

HEDIS^® is a registered trademark of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).

FHIR^® is the registered trademark of HL7 and is used with the permission of HL7.