Supplemental Data Elements

Part of the definition of a quality measure involves the ability to specify additional information to be returned for each member of a population. Within QDM and HQMF, these supplemental data elements are specified as QDM Data Elements for patient characteristics (such as Race, Ethnicity, Payer, and Administrative Sex) and marking them with an SDE code within the underlying HQMF XML.

With CQL, supplemental data elements are specified using the same mechanism as any other population criteria, by defining an expression that returns the appropriate data element, and then identifying that expression within the CQL-Based HQMF.

For example, the following QDM data elements describe the Supplemental Data required for CMS126v5:

"Patient Characteristic Ethnicity: Ethnicity" using "Ethnicity CDCREC Value Set (2.16.840.1.114222.4.11.837)"
"Patient Characteristic Payer: Payer" using "Payer SOP Value Set (2.16.840.1.114222.4.11.3591)"
"Patient Characteristic Race: Race" using "Race CDCREC Value Set (2.16.840.1.114222.4.11.836)"
"Patient Characteristic Sex: ONC Administrative Sex" using "ONC Administrative Sex AdministrativeGender Value Set (2.16.840.1.113762.1.4.1)"

The equivalent CQL would use the QDM Data Elements and the appropriate value set to identify the data element to be returned:

define "SDE Ethnicity":
    ["Patient Characteristic Ethnicity": "Ethnicity CDCREC Value Set"] Characteristic
        return Characteristic.code

By convention, the name of each supplemental data element expression would start with "SDE ". The supplemental data element expressions would be required to return a single value when evaluated in the context of a member of the population. For example, patient-based measures would return the value of a supplemental data element for a given patient.

Within the CQL-Based HQMF HTML (Human Readable), Supplemental Data Elements would be displayed in the same way that they are currently for QDM-Based HQMF HTML. In the underlying HQMF XML, the mechanism specified by CQL-Based HQMF would be used to indicate that the specific criteria was a supplemental data element (the SDE code on the criteria definition).