The Joint Commission (TJC) has announced a new program called Pioneers in Quality to provide education and support for hospitals attempting to meet the growing requirements for electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs). The program takes the place of TJC’s currently suspended Top Performer on Key Quality Measures recognition program while it undergoes changes to better reflect the evolving national measurement environment, the organization says.

Pioneers in Quality will support current and future Top Performer hospitals as they adapt to this new environment and work on aligning TJC reporting requirements with changes to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program. Over the last 2 years, CMS has altered its performance measures and abolished a number of chart-based measures.

In order to stay in alignment with CMS, TJC also made these changes. In 2015, the organization introduced a Flexible Reporting Option that allowed hospitals to decide which measure sets to report and to begin reporting eCQMs. This year, CMS will start requiring hospitals to report at least four eCQMs—making this the optimal time to introduce the Pioneers in Quality program, TJC said.

The new initiative will include educational webinars, a resource portal, recognition categories for eCQM pioneers, a Pioneers in Quality advisory panel, a modified TJC annual report that focuses on the components of the program and eCQM measurement, and a peer-to-peer solution exchange that will be modified to include eCQMs.

“Through a variety of educational offerings, we will work with individual experts and healthcare organizations that have successfully used eCQMs for quality measurement and improvement and share their lessons learned so other hospitals can meet this challenge,” said David W. Baker, MD, MPH, FACP, executive vice president, Division of Health Care Quality Evaluation, The Joint Commission.” We hope all Joint Commission hospitals will take advantage of the Pioneers in Quality resources.”

More information is available at the Pioneers in Quality portal.