001. Diabetes: Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) Poor Control (>9%)

Percentage of patients 18–75 years of age with diabetes who had hemoglobin A1c > 9.0% during the measurement period. This is an outcome measure.

This measure is to be reported a minimum of once per performance period for patients with diabetes seen during the performance period. The most recent quality-data code submitted will be used for performance calculation. This measure may be reported by eligible clinicians who perform the quality actions described in the measure based on the services provided and the measure-specific denominator coding.

CMS is suppressing claims-based submissions for this measure for the 2021 performance year. This is due to an error that caused CMS systems to reject claims that included billing codes relevant to this measure. However, CMS has also indicated that they will truncate the submission period rather than supressing the measure for eligible clinicians for whom they have nine-months of data.

Since you won't know how many months of claims-based data CMS has for you, you should plan on using an alternate reporting method.

This is an inverse measure. A lower calculated performance rate for this measure indicates better clinical care or control. The “Performance Not Met” numerator option for this measure is the representation of the better clinical quality or control. Reporting that numerator option will produce a performance rate that trends closer to 0%, as quality increases.

A1c measurements to come from lab testing; do not include measurements reported by the patient.

Only patients with a diagnosis of Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes should be included in the denominator of this measure; patients with a diagnosis of secondary diabetes due to another condition should not be included.