A
new report released by the National Quality Forum (NQF) offers five recommendations for using Electronic Health Records (EHRs) to effectively facilitate, measure, and improve care communication and care coordination across multiple health care settings.
With funding from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), NQF convened a multistakeholder committee to identify opportunities to measure and improve care communication and care coordination using EHRs. NQF’s new report outlines the following five recommendations to make EHRs more useful in measuring and identifying areas for improvement:
- Collect and share standardized data
- Optimize EHR usability for patients and caregivers
- Optimize EHR usability for clinicians
- Develop novel EHR data elements to improve measurement
- Leverage EHR data to fill measurement gaps
Two versions of the report are available. A
longer, more technical Final Recommendations Report provides extensive detail about the recommendations designed for measure developers, EHR vendors, health care providers, and other quality measurement stakeholders. A
shorter version, intended for changemakers, policy and legislative professionals, clinicians, patient advocates, and members of the public, is also available.
The recommendations also are intended to promote greater accountability. Better use of EHR-sourced data is critical to measure and improve the quality of care in general and is also essential to promote equitable health outcomes.