dQMs - Digital Quality Measures

CMS’s dQM Strategic Roadmap and strategy for the transition to digital measurement requires collaboration and engagement with interoperability work across the healthcare ecosystem. CMS is closely collaborating on initiatives on projects including:

• Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy (ASTP)'s United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI)
• ASTP’s USCDI+ Initiative
• ASTP's USCDI + Quality
• ASTP’s Interoperability Standards Advisory (ISA)
• Health Level Seven International® Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources® standard
• Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Data Modernization
• CDC Public Health Data Modernization Initiative

Digital Quality Measure (dQM) Related Tools for Use and Evaluation

• CQL-to-ELM Translator: A specification for producing an Expression Logical Model (ELM) file format from Clinical Quality Language (CQL).
• Clinical Quality Framework (CQF) Ruler: The Clinical Quality Framework (CQF) Ruler is a collection of plugins built for the HAPI Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources® (FHIR®) Java Persistence API (JPA) server that brings the FHIR Clinical Reasoning Module to life. It enables healthcare organizations and developers to process electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs), evaluate decision logic, and apply clinical rules in real time.
• CQL Evaluation Engine: An open-source Java-based evaluation engine capable of evaluating the result of any CQL expression. This tool is now part of the CQL repository.
• CQL Execution Framework: The engine that runs the rules and expressions defined in CQL to evaluate electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs), decision support logic, or other healthcare-related computations.
• FHIR® eCQM Examples: A website containing example eCQMs using FHIR®.
• Measure Authoring Development Integrated Environment (MADiE): MADiE allows users to develop and test measures in an integrated workspace and supports QI-Core profile-informed authoring and testing of FHIR® measures.
• Visual Studio Code: An open-source text editor. The ‘cqframework.cql’ extension supports highlighting, syntax checking, ad-hoc evaluation, test cases, and terminology for CQL and FHIR® model validation. This free text editor environment can be used to facilitate measure evaluation and testing for eCQMs using the open source CQL Evaluation Engine.