In January 2021, under a contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the National Quality Forum (NQF) convened a multistakeholder Committee to identify the current state of leveraging EHRs to measure and improve care communication and care coordination. The Environmental Scan Report is intended to educate and convey the importance of this topic to a broad, nontechnical audience. It identifies consensus definitions of care communication and care coordination; establishes the relationship between care communication and care coordination and improved healthcare outcomes; and outlines the challenges of measuring provider performance on care communication and care coordination. The findings in the Environmental Scan Report will inform the future creation of consensus-based recommendations for facilitating and improving EHR-based care communication and care coordination measurement in an all-payer, cross-setting, and fully electronic manner to drive quality improvement and outcomes.

Cindy Cullen, a senior director at Mathematica, is a member of the EHR Care Coordination Committee.