Showing its continued commitment to highlighting and addressing social determinants of health, the Texas Medical Association offered its “strongest support” to a pair of new quality measures the National Quality Forum (NQF) is considering for screening of those social factors.
TMA expressed that support in a letter urging NQF to move the two measures – labeled “Screen Positive Rate for Social Drivers of Health” and “Screening for Social Drivers of Health” – through its review process. NQF is a nonprofit, independent organization that vets measures for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and other payers. TMA sent an identical letter of support to CMS, which is expected to propose the measures in future rulemaking.
“At TMA, we recognize that social drivers of health have a profound impact on patients and the physicians who care for them, especially in the wake of COVID-19. These two measures signal that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has begun to recognize and address the significant impact that social drivers of health have on health disparities, outcomes, and costs,” wrote TMA President E. Linda Villarreal, MD, in the December letter. “Additionally, social drivers impact both physician well-being and the economics of clinical practice.”
The Screening for Social Drivers of Health measure would record the percentage of adult patients screened for “food insecurity, housing instability, transportation problems, utility help needs, and interpersonal safety.” The Screen Positive Rate measure would simply record the percentage of patients who screen positive for those factors. CMS is expected to propose the measures for use in the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System and Medicare’s Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program. CMS released the two as part of a longer List of Measures Under Consideration late in 2021.
TMA wrote that physicians in Texas already are working to identify and address patients’ health-related social needs.
“The challenge is that physicians are screening for and addressing their patients’ social needs on their own. CMS has provided no guidance or incentives relative to standard quality measures that could inform risk adjustment, cost benchmarks, financial incentives, and partnerships between physician practices and communities,” TMA’s message said. “We strongly support CMS advancing these measures through the [Measure Applications Partnership] review process. These recommendations are essential to advance CMS’ stated commitment to equity as well as enacting measures that matter to patients and physicians.”
NQF and CMS released the list as part of a “pre-rulemaking process,” which gives those entities the opportunity to collect input on potential measures before they go through the regulatory ringer.
CMS responded to Dr. Villarreal with a Dec. 13 letter saying the two measures would be reviewed by NQF’s Measure Applications Partnership, which convenes stakeholders “for an intensive annual review of the quality measures being considered by CMS for almost 20 federal health programs.”