The HIT Policy Committee's Quality Measures Workgroup is taking recommendations from the public until Dec. 23 on clinical quality measures for Stage 2 and Stage 3 meaningful use.

The workgroup, divided into five tiger teams, is focusing on measure domains that include: Patient and Family Engagement, Clinical Appropriateness/Efficiency, Care Coordination, Patient Safety and Population and Public Health.

According to David Lansky, chair of the Quality Measures Workgroup, the domains "are broadly aligned" with the National Priorities Partnership Framework for health quality, and the five pillars of meaningful use – which include improving safety, quality, efficiency, and health disparities; engaging patients and families; improving care coordination; improving population health; and ensuring adequate privacy and security protections.

The tiger teams have already proposed measure concepts for each of the domain areas, Lansky said. After reviewing the teams' recommendations, the workgroup revised and consolidated the measure concepts and now requests public comment on the proposed concepts.

Lansky said the workgroup is requesting general comments and specific examples of measures for each measure concept that fit the following criteria:

• HIT-sensitive – Capable of being built into electronic health record (EHR) systems with implementation of relevant health IT functions (e.g., clinical decision support) that result in improved outcomes and/or clinical performance

• Parsimonious – Applies across multiple types of providers, care settings and conditions

• Demonstrates preventable burden – Supports potential improvements in population health and reduces burden of illness

• Assesses health risk status and outcomes – Supports assessment of patient health risks that can be used for risk adjusting other measures, and assessing changes in outcomes, including general cross-cutting measures of risk status and functional status and condition-specific measures

• Longitudinal – Enables assessment of longitudinal, condition-specific, patient-focused episodes of care

Comments to the workgroup can be submitted online here.