Does “Medication, not Administered” imply placement of a medication order?

No, “Medication, not Administered” is the method CQL uses to express the QDM datatype “Medication, Administered” when using negation rationale to indicate a reason the action of administering the medication did not occur. Administered medications do not necessarily originate with orders, for example, for medications with standing orders, or orders initiated outside of the clinical software. In the QDM, negation indicates an action did not occur for a reason. It indicates the clinician recorded they did not administer a medication. In the first implementation of eCQMs, measure concepts allowing negation used the same medication value set to represent the type of medications not administered.