This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
CMS adds transplant waitlist quality measure, drops 4 others from Quality Incentive Program in final rule
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Starting in 2020, CMS will start tracking the percent of prevalent dialysis patients who are placed on kidney transplant waitlists.
The Percentage of Prevalent Patients Waitlisted (PPPW) clinical measure, approved earlier this month in the final rule for the national Quality Incentive Program (QIP), evaluates the percentage of patients attributed to each dialysis facility during a 12-month period who were on the kidney or kidney-pancreas transplant waitlist.
“The measure is a directly standardized percentage, in that each facility’s percentage of kidney transplant patients on the kidney transplant waitlist is based on the number of patients one would expect to be wait-listed for a facility with patients of similar age and comorbidities,” CMS wrote in the final rule. The changes take effect in January.
The PPPW measure, which excludes patients with ESRD aged at least 75 years, is one of two quality measures proposed by CMS to track patients’ access to transplant. The agency decided to withdraw the proposed Standardized First Kidney Transplant Waitlist Ratio clinical measure, slated for implementation in 2021, based on opposition from the renal community. The measure would have assessed the number of patients who are placed on the transplant waitlist or receive a living donor kidney within 1 year of the date when dialysis is initiated.
CMS also agreed to eliminate four reporting measures in the QIP: tracking health care personnel influenza vaccinations; assessing pain levels in patients on dialysis; monitoring anemia; and monitoring serum phosphorus levels. These were eliminated based on CMS’ Meaningful Measures initiative, which triggers an evaluation when “the cost associated with a measure outweighs the benefit of its continued use in the program,” the agency said in a press release in July when the proposed rule was released. “The proposals to remove these measures are consistent with CMS’ commitment to using a smaller set of more meaningful measures.”
The QIP is a 3-year process that includes a performance year, a data evaluation year and a payment year in which any penalties are assessed. – by Mark E. Neumann
Collapse
CMS. Fed Regist. 2018;83:56922-57073.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts