Quality Measures

Quality measures provide meaningful information to clinicians to improve patient outcomes, decrease clinician burden, reduce healthcare disparities, advance evidence-based medicine, and promote population health care and coordination.

In 2015, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a set of quality measures, but it lacked measures specific to emergency medicine. As the leading advocate for emergency medicine, ACEP brings the requisite experience, knowledge, and insight to develop quality measures specific to Emergency Medicine. For example, quality measure ACEP 21—Coagulation Studies in Patients Presenting with Chest Pain with No Coagulopathy or Bleeding—helped to regulate unnecessary ordering of coagulation studies, preventing overuse, and enhancing cost efficiency.

ACEP aims to promote the widespread adoption of emergency care measures that cater to all patients, regardless of social determinants, enhancing care quality, and reducing physician burden.

ACEP develops quality measures from clinical data gathered from our members and leaders through the Emergency Medicine Data Institute and the Emergency Care Quality Measurement Consortium Vision (ECQMC).

The measure workgroup is a volunteer committee comprised of emergency physicians with 5+ years of experience developing and implementing measures. This workgroup collaborates with subject matter experts to develop selection criteria, identify, prioritize develop and test new quality measures, and provide guidance on dissemination and adoption. It balances clinician and quality professional knowledge and experience with patient perspectives for successful implementation and improved clinical outcomes.

Hosted by ACEP, the ECQMC uses a co-ownership model to improve the quality, safety and transparency of emergency medicine to support better outcomes, reduce the cost and burden of measurement, and avoid duplication of effort.

To date, ACEP has developed 25 quality measures currently for emergency physicians.

Four new emergency medicine measures have been developed by ACEP’s Quality and Patient Safety Committee (QPSC) Workgroup and the Emergency Care Quality Measures Consortium (ECQMC). These include - 

1. ED admissions rate measure for atrial fibrillation
2. Syphilis testing among ED patients with a positive pregnancy test link
3. Blood pressure control for adult patients with non-traumatic intracranial hemorrhage
4. Point-of-care ultrasound for cardiac arrest

ACEP is looking for members to get involved in the development of emergency medicine quality measures and data analytics. Members who are interested may contribute through any of the following initiatives –

• Members interested in quality measure development are encouraged to join the ACEP Quality and Patient Safety Committee. Applications open annually in May.
• Members interested in learning about how electronic quality data are collected should join the Health Information Technology Committee. Applications open annually in May.
• Members interested in how quality data can be used for academic and industry-partnered research can join the Emergency Medicine Data Institute Research Committee and/or Interest Advisory Group. Contact us to apply.

ACEP wants to hear from you about ideas for prospective new quality measures.

Submit your idea for consideration using this form.

Through our Washington, D.C. office, ACEP regularly comments on government decisions and initiatives that may impact quality measures for emergency medicine. Our comments aim to reduce undue burden by offering the emergency medicine perspective and to improve data capture for use in research.