The Standard

The Official Blog of Health Level Seven® International

visit HL7.org 

Intro to HL7® Resources and Work Groups Important to the Quality Measurement Community

[fa icon="calendar"] Dec 9, 2019 12:23:56 PM / by Lisa Anderson, MSN, RN-BC

Intro to HL7 QMC

Health Level Seven (HL7®) drives the standards upon which electronic Clinical Quality Measures (eCQMs) sit, so participation in these venues is crucial. The HL7 community already has a lot of technical input but lacks input from the clinical side – either from clinicians or clinical informaticists. There is a gap between the clinical intent of quality measures and the technical standard, but clinical informatics experts can help bridge this gap by contributing to the conversation and development of the HL7 standards and resources.

  • Da Vinci - Digital Exchange for Quality Measures (DEQM) Da Vinci supports the integration of value-based care data exchange across communities. DEQM defines how additional measures will work and create patterns for different types of measures and will replace Quality Reporting Document Architecture (QRDA) formats for eCQM reporting in the future.
  • Vocabulary Work Group –  eCQMs require the use of standardized terminologies, and this group maintains coded vocabulary terms used in HL7 information structures. The work group maintains the HL7 Vocabulary Model and guidance of the use of vocabularies in HL7 Standards and provides clear guidelines on the principles of vocabulary content to support meaning over time.
  • Patient Care (PC) Work Group – This group defines the requirements of and designs/validates standards specifications and implementation guides for the capture, communication, and use of information related to the management, execution and quality of care provision.
  • Clinical Interoperability Council (CIC) – The CIC serves as the liaison between the clinical community and HL7, conducting outreach to clinicians to include their expertise in standards development, and promoting interoperability across healthcare, research, public health, quality improvement, and other health domains through consensus-based standard data elements.

As a measure author, it is important to understand which work group owns the resources used in your measures, and actively participate in those venues. For example, a measure developer working on a measure related to infant breast milk consumption will likely want to participate in the OO Nutrition Sub-Group to ensure this measure concept’s specific use case is represented.

In addition to the HL7 groups mentioned above, there are many resources available to measure developers and implementers to provide additional standards and information to inform and guide the development of eCQMs: 

  • eCQI Resource Center – This is the one-stop-shop for all things eCQM. This website houses the eCQM specifications (including both previously implemented and current), links to standards—including the Quality Data Model (QDM) and CQL—used to develop eCQMs, educational and engagement opportunities, and news and events. It is meant to provide all of the information or links to information needed to author or implement eCQMs.

Topics: FHIR, interoperability, CIMI, CMS, Da Vinci, Quality Reporting, Clinical Quality Language, DEQM, Quality Data Model, Data Exchange for Qualitiy Measures, QI Core, clinical decision support, clinical quality measures

Lisa Anderson, MSN, RN-BC

Written by Lisa Anderson, MSN, RN-BC

Lisa Anderson is the assistant director of measure validation, at NCQA.

Lists by Topic

see all

Posts by Topic

see all