Astrata Selected as Beta Testing Vendor for NCQA's Measure Certification Program™ using Digital Quality Measures

PITTSBURGH, Nov. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Astrata, an innovator in advanced analytics for health care quality, today announced its participation in National Committee for Quality Assurance's (NCQA) Digital Quality Measurement (dQM) pilot and Measure Certification Program. Astrata was selected as a beta testing vendor for certification with NCQA's new digital measures.

NCQA is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving health care quality through evidence-based measurement. NCQA has spent decades developing and refining the Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS®), a collection of quality measures used by health plans across the country to objectively evaluate and improve the quality of care delivered to their members.

NCQA has worked to make HEDIS quality measurement more proactive, timely, actionable and scalable to a wider population through dQM. NCQA's initiative to publish measures as computer code will change the way measures are reported by using electronic medical record (EMR) data to produce more accurate and timely quality information.

Astrata is a natural fit as a beta tester for NCQA's Certification Program using digital measures. In September 2021, in collaboration with SMILE CDR, Astrata released eMeasure, the industry's first HEDIS engine developed specifically for dQM. eMeasure natively ingests NCQA's Clinical Quality Language (CQL) measure packages and maps them to structured, FHIR-standard member EMR data to generate gap lists and HEDIS-specific statistics.

In addition to computing quality measures from electronic medical record FHIR data, Astrata's product suite includes abstraction tools that leverage natural language processing (NLP) to capture and act on the data within unstructured clinical notes — 50% to 80% of EMR data. Astrata has previously worked with NCQA as an invited member of NCQA's NLP Working Group, helping to define how NLP can be used to advance NCQA's digital quality goals.

"We think the future of health care quality measurement will combine structured and unstructured EMR data, claims data and care management data to produce a more timely, more actionable and more equitable, population-wide analysis. This is exactly the kind of data we need to move us more quickly towards value-based care goals," said Rebecca Jacobson, M.D., M.S., F.A.C.M.I., president of Astrata.

As of November 2021, NCQA has released 22 CQL Digital Measures, and is on track to shift HEDIS to fully digital by 2025. NCQA's pilot program will evaluate and help refine its dQM measure packages with industry partners in clinical settings. As a beta testing vendor, Astrata will also seek certification for all 22 CQL measures.

NCQA Measure Certification Program™ is a trademark of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).

HEDIS^® is a registered trademark of the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).

Media contact: Josh Holmes
Email: [email protected] 

SOURCE Astrata