Making eCQMs Matter to Your Organization

In the past, the process of adopting eCQMs often started in the IT department. And MyMichigan Medical Center Sault was no exception. For Sandy Deplonty, the hospital’s chief information officer, it was a significant challenge, but one worth taking on.

“When you’re doing reporting and trying to run your department, and help every other department, while staying up-to-date on all the changing specifications and value sets, you worry: do we really need to take on another project? How difficult will this be? Will we get audited?” she remembers. “We still thought it was important to invest in our eCQM program early on—even before public reporting was a factor—because we’re very quality driven and patient driven at our hospital.”

Find A Partner Who Makes Your Job Easier

Sandy and her team knew that for the program to be successful and sustainable, they couldn’t do it alone. They found a partner in Medisolv.

“Our Medisolv Quality Advisor is a true expert,” Sandy remarks. “She passes her knowledge on to us instead of us having to do the research and worry, for example, if we are using the right value sets. She can tell us the value sets needed to meet the measure and actually helps us to find the items in our EHR for mapping. It’s just awesome.”  

Train, Retrain, Then Train Your Staff Some More

But, like any organizational change, fully embracing eCQMs is not an overnight process, and Sandy learned that you have to be patient but clear—that true eCQM management is a team effort, not just “IT’s job.”

“We did initial trainings, but naturally people didn't use it or didn’t remember how to use it, and they expected IT to own it. So, it takes some retraining,” she admits. “I would tell everyone, ‘You’re not going to hurt anything! Go play with it.’ The process did get simpler over time, and that’s in large part because of all the hand-holding that Medisolv does with us.”

Get Comfortable—But Never Rest on Your Laurels

As people grew more comfortable with eCQMs, attitudes started to change. What was once considered a necessary evil to please the CMS gods suddenly became a useful and meaningful tool for driving quality improvement.

“Before the attitude was, OK, we have to do this for meaningful use, but we’re not going to use the data. We’re going to rely on our abstracted data,” Sandy says. “Whereas now, we really rely on it. Our quality department isn’t just reporting. They use the data to go to our providers and show them how we can make things better.”

And make things better they have. Medical Center Sault is consistently ranked in the nation’s top 20 and top 100 rural community hospitals by the National Rural Health Association’s Rural Health Policy Institute. The hospital has also continued to get a jump start on voluntary measures as they emerge.

“We tell Medisolv we want to track everything,” Sandy says with a laugh. “We want to know it all! Because that’s how you get better.