CMS Publishes 2016 CMS Quality Reporting Document Architecture Implementation Guide Appendix and Updated Schematrons

Review New Information for Guidance on Submitting Quality Reporting Document Architecture Files in the 2016 Reporting Period

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has published the 2016 CMS Quality Reporting Document Architecture (QRDA) Implementation Guide (IG) for Eligible Professional (EP) Programs and Hospital Quality Reporting (HQR) Appendix(Version 1.0, February 26, 2016). This is the Appendix to the 2016 CMS QRDA IG that was published on July 8, 2015.

The 2016 CMS QRDA IG provides implementation guidance for the 2016 reporting period for submitting QRDA Category I (QRDA-I) and/or QRDA Category III (QRDA-III) files to the CMS EP and HQR programs.

This Appendix lists important updates and clarifications to the 2016 CMS QRDA IG, which include:

• Technical corrections to some of the templates of the 2016 CMS QRDA IG.


• Clarifications and additional guidance for QRDA-I file submission to HQR.


• Clarifications on elements used for eligible hospital eCQM calculations when specifications are not clear.


• Clarifications and additional guidance for specific validations to the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) programs.


• Patient Data Section entry templates constraints for PQRS.


• A complete list of the Universally Unique Identifiers (UUIDs) referenced by the eCQM Specifications for EP Update June 2015 (total 64 eCQMs), which include the Version Specific Measure Identifier for each EP eCQM and the population identifiers for all population criteria within each of the eCQMs. It also includes the identifiers for reporting strata, if applicable.

Please refer to the change log within each schematron file for CMS program specific changes.

For More Information

You can find the 2016 CMS QRDA IG Appendix and Schematrons on the CMS eCQM Library and the eCQI Resource Center.

CMS will notify stakeholders when test tools are available for the latest versions of the schematrons and when test files can be accepted by CMS systems for the 2016 reporting period.