What's new in FY 2019-2020

The CEDR program continues to enjoy significant growth in 2019. We now support 265 clinician groups and expect to exceed 25 million emergency department visits this performance year. The support of our members and clinical groups made this possible, and CEDR appreciates the support of everyone who works each day to make this quality program successful.

The CEDR support team continues to expand as ACEP hires additional staff to ensure participating groups and clinicians receive the support needed to successfully report quality metrics and participate in the Quality Payment Program (QPP). In addition, ACEP put in place a new work order with our technology partner, FIGmd, to support our registry operations with new features and capabilities.

FIGmd has developed a completely redesigned web portal for viewing the CEDR dashboard. We expect to roll this out to all groups in Q1 2020, and it should deliver an enhanced user experience for all CEDR participants. In addition, FIGmd and ACEP continue to enhance the implementation process by streamlining the data acquisition and transformation capabilities of CEDR. These changes prepare CEDR to move forward effectively in the changing environment of quality measures and QPP program.

In conjunction with the release of the proposed CMS 2020 Final Rule, ACEP is working with multiple entities to provide CMS with feedback that will make the rule more valuable for our EM community. CMS introduced a 3-year roadmap in the proposed rule which provides us with information about further intentions for the QPP program. CMS will look to change the paradigm for the reporting of measures, activities, interoperability and cost. While these areas currently exist and report independently of each other, CMS is proposing to align them into a more coordinated, value-based reporting mechanism. Also, CMS continues to raise the bar on the scoring requirements in the program. Next year, the minimum score to avoid penalty may move to 45 out of 100 and CMS expects to move this score even higher in subsequent years.

CEDR continues to provide clinicians and groups with a valuable mechanism to prepare for the ongoing escalation of the minimum MIPS score. For 2020, CEDR is working on supplying up to 25 QCDR measures to augment the standard QPP measures published by CMS for Emergency Medicine. Many groups find that some measures require data that either may not be available, or stored in a consistent manner needed for calculations. Consequently, CEDR maximized the number of measures in our library to provide groups with enough options even if some measures are not possible to calculate.

CEDR also invests significant resources in the development of new measures. CMS proposes to increase the burden on measure developers, greatly increasing the time needed to bring a measure from concept to operational status. These strategic investments in future measures ensure that Emergency Medicine will always have a QCDR that can enable ED clinicians to excel in the QPP program and enjoy the benefits of the quality work our clinicians to every day.

Thank you again for all the support and participation. Serving ACEP’s many members is a privilege, and our CEDR team looks forward to continuing to serve in the years ahead.