Medicare quality measures need improvement, says government watchdog
Modern Healthcare September 20, 2019
CMS quality measures might not indicate the actual care patients receive, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.
The GAO studied how the agency decides what quality measures to develop and use. It also evaluated how the CMS monitors its funding for quality measurement activities.
The watchdog found that the CMS doesn’t have processes to make sure that the indicators actually measure what the agency says it cares about in its strategic objectives. The GAO found that the CMS carries over large sums of unused funds each year for activities related to quality measurement. And that the CMS fails to keep track of all its quality-measurement funding.
The CMS should create standard practices to assess the measures that it’s...