The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has issued a request for information about how EHRs and other health IT can enable quality measurement.
The agency notes that there has been a "tremendous" increased in adoption of EHRs and that some institutions have successfully used them generate quality measures that differ from paper-generated ones.
However, AHRQ notes in the RFI, quality measurement enabled by health IT is an "emerging field."
The RFI asks the public to respond to any or all of 15 specific questions regarding the creation and use of quality measurements enabled by health IT, such as what motivated one's interest in health IT quality measures, whose voices are not being heard, and tools, systems and strategies used to aggregate information from various EHR systems.
The deadline for submitting comments is August 20.
The capability of EHRs to capture, report and analyze data to measure quality is a cornerstone of EHR adoption and the subject of much interest. AHRQ states in its RFI that it is "committed to garnering further insight in order to facilitate meaningful advancements in the next generation of quality measurement."
While it notes that commenting is voluntary, the RFI is asking a wide range of stakeholders to provide input, and even created a "high-level" overview report on the subject as a resource tool.
To learn more:
- here's the RFI
- read AHRQ's accompanying report