Patients Over Paperwork and Meaningful Measures

CMS just announced "Meaningful Measures" and "Patients Over Paperwork." 

Here are a few excerpts from the statement made by CMS Administrator Seema Verma at the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network (LAN) Fall Summit:

CMS announced our new initiative “Patients Over Paperwork” to address regulatory burden. This is an effort to go through all of our regulations to reduce burden. Because when burdensome regulations no longer advance the goal of patients first, we must improve or eliminate them.   

That’s a lot of provider time, money, and resources focused on paperwork instead of patients. 

We have too many measures. We are measuring process and not outcomes. 

That’s why we’re revising current quality measures across all programs to ensure that measure sets are streamlined, outcomes-based, and meaningful to doctors and patients. This includes a review of the Hospital Star Rating program. And, we’re announcing today our new comprehensive initiative, "Meaningful Measures.” 

“Meaningful Measures” takes a new approach to quality measures to reduce the burden of reporting on all providers. It draws on advice and input from the LAN as well as the National Academies of Medicine, the Core Quality Measures Collaborative, and the National Quality Forum. Continued input from the LAN will be critical in this effort. 

Meaningful Measures will involve only assessing those core issues that are the most vital to providing high-quality care and improving patient outcomes. 

​Patients Over Paperwork, Meaningful Measures, and the new direction for the Innovation Center, are just three of our recent efforts to improve the health care system.