2021.05.12 EQRS Program Working Group Meeting

• Call will be recorded for the purpose of capturing further meeting notes.  Any objections please inform
• Meeting has been repurposed to focus on the Program and EDI around issues, concerns and updates

• Lisa working with DUA, OAGM and CMS
• DUA being used circulated to everyone
• NCC will send out a new DUA to all EDI Submitters to run past their leadership

• Hospitalization and Clinical data reporting - how it should be handled; need clarification; impact to future
  • Hospitalization is in new contract and will be used
  • Suggested hospitalization AND labs should be used for QIP
  • Further discussion needed and will revisit in next weeks meeting
  • Use hospital data for that month
  • Lisa suggested creating a feature page
  • Ahmar from QIPS perspective needs to know if its ok to use those values for our calculation – using the hospital data for that month. Ahmar will get a confirmation for the next meeting, then can get feature page done and prioritized
• Ability to get access to CDR - data repository beneficial to everyone
  • Lisa will schedule a meeting for further discussion - Ken Howard
  • Discussed last December and revisited in Feb, 2021
  • EQRS data not exist in CDR
  • Lisa – NCC has access to a redshift instance. Nathan thought NCC has access to CDR, but they do not. Nathan would like to know where is EQRS on the CDR roadmap. Lisa will follow up.
  • Needs to remain on roadmap and have further discussions
• QIP
  • Heard concerns all of 2020 shouldn't be used for various reasons
  • Later 6 months will still need to run the program
  • More clarification coming on updated rules and will need deeper dive
  • Policy lead, Delia, will be included on call/discussion once the rule is out
• Stakeholder call this afternoon (1pm eastern) to discuss Network contract
  • This may be a topic for discussion in next weeks discussion based on the Network Contract meeting
• COVID Vaccination feedback
  • It was just set up in NHSM but looks like it will end up being chronic
  • If becomes an annual vaccination would like to treat it like other vaccinations (after it is out of acute phase)
  • Kathleen concerned about various places this must be reported – states, NHSM, and then EQRS. Each agency has different reporting requirements
  • Revathy said they just spent last 2 months working on NHSM
  • Nathan - if have to do this can we discuss what is useful so not just adding reporting for the sake of reporting but instead actionable and informative AND talk about how it is being implemented in EQRS
  • Biggest benefit to having vaccination in EQRS is that you can get down to the individual patient data – can look at demographics, can look at social determinants of health
  • Nathan – advocate for getting vaccinations out of the clinical data – all for it – also think it is great opportunity as vaccinations is designed and implemented to make sure it is flexible for the future so whatever new thing comes out in 2022
  • Kelly – suggest reach out to CDC since they must report on vaccinations – query what CDC already has instead of having Dialysis groups collect this information. Believes Covid data is being collected by states and sent to CDC
  • Betina – separate and distinct systems - we do not connect to
  • Nathan – experience with Covid reporting – multiple state and county registry and faced trying to connect to these – they all have HL7 but different requirements. Would like a central immunization registry that feed state systems connected to CDC and connect to EQRS
  • Vlad - collect data for research - pull from state/county BUT if you are connecting to 5 star (money or prestige) he wants to submit data himself – because not 100% accurate out of state.  
  • Duplication of reporting
  • Create a vaccination module separate from clinical
  • Simple design, structure and flexibility
  • Suggestion to integrate with CDC
  • FMC and DaVita report to CDC and state
  • Hope each state would develop their own registry
  • Would like to have a centralized system to access data, state registries
  • Possible enabler - expand into multiple PIs
  • Further research and discussion needed

• Action: EDIs go back and look at their systems and confirm what will happen with add of the decimal
• FMC (K. Prewitt), DaVita (N. Muzos), and DCI (V. Ladik) are all okay with CMS adding the decimal
• The ICD code description should be displayed and the code itself should be entered and displayed exactly as described in the standard

Attestation and Depression data

• Anticipating reopen of Sep – Dec but never mentioned about what to do about halt on clinical, attestation and depression data. So far only talked about un-halting clinical data, what about attestation and depression data.
• Ahmar is trying to get more information from Single User Interface clinics for calendar year 2020.
• Follow schedule as clinical closure
• Data will be required
• Date is still to be determined
• Data will be reported
• Attestations not successful in pre prod and prod

Request for users to have access to REMIS 

• Valuable source of data to corporate user
• Lisa will take back and see if possible