The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) are excited to announce the publication of the 2024 National Impact Assessment of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Quality Measures Report. CMS assesses the quality and efficiency impact of the use of quality measures in CMS programs every 3 years. The first report was published in 2012.

This report analyzes quality measures used in 26 CMS quality and value-based incentive payment programs. Improvements in measure performance, largely prior to the COVID-19 public health emergency, are associated with positive impacts for millions of patients and substantial costs avoided. COVID-19 created challenges for most health systems that limited capacity to sustain improvement. During 2020 and 2021, 38% and 47% of measures analyzed, respectively, had scores worse than expected from baseline (2016–2019) trends, including significant worsening of key patient safety metrics.

The report documents progress in employing digital data sources and optimizing the CMS measure portfolio to reduce provider burden, as well as perspectives from focus groups that underscore the critical need to develop equity measures that address bias in care delivery, deficits in cultural competence, and social drivers of health relative to unmet health needs, poor access, and low health literacy. Notable highlights specific to eight CMS health care quality measures, including Equity and Behavioral Health are featured along with an appendix with comprehensive results.

This report is useful to the measure developer community, patients and families, clinicians, other health care providers, federal partners, and researchers. It provides insights into how we can achieve our goals to employ meaningful measures, reduce reporting burden, and empower patients and providers to make informed health care decisions while promoting innovation and quality improvement in health care delivery nationwide.

You can find the 2024 Impact Assessment Report and accompanying Appendices at: https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Initiatives-Patient-Assessment-Ins…
 

CMS welcomes your feedback on the 2024 Impact Assessment Report, which you can submit by email to ImpactAssessment@hsag.com.