Electronic health records (EHRs) present key opportunities to improve the efficiency of quality reporting. An underappreciated aspect of quality measurement is the amount of effort that goes into acquiring and reporting quality data. From chart abstraction to formatting the data so it can be shared with payers, accreditation agencies, and clinical staff, health systems spend a tremendous amount of funds on tracking and reporting of metrics. Electronic quality measures (eQMs) have the potential to automate much of this data collection and reporting process. By freeing staff who have extensive familiarity with the metrics from time-consuming chart abstraction, these quality experts can partner with clinical staff to improve patient care.
See Article by Bravata et al

In this issue of Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes , Bravata et al1 developed and evaluated a series eQMs abstracted electronically from the medical record for patients with minor stroke and transient ischemic attack (TIA). The authors developed 31 eQMs encompassing 15 domains of care for patients with minor stroke and TIA that are aligned with national guidelines,2 clinical performance measures,3 and joint commission metrics.4 They then evaluated the agreement between these eQMs and the same measures abstracted manually in a random sample of 763 patients from 50 Veterans Health Administration hospitals.

The authors found that for 16 of the 31 measures, electronic abstraction compared favorably with manual abstraction both for eligibility …