226. Preventive Care and Screening: Tobacco Use: Screening and Cessation Intervention

Percentage of patients aged 18 years and older who were screened for tobacco use one or more times within 12 months and who received cessation intervention if identified as a tobacco user.

This measure is to be submitted a minimum of once per performance period for patients seen during the performance period. This measure is intended to reflect the quality of services provided for preventive screening for tobacco use. For this implementation of the measure, the denominator eligible encounter should be used to determine if the numerator action for each of the submission criteria was performed within the 12-month look back period from the date of the denominator eligible encounter. This measure may be submitted by Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) eligible clinicians who provided the measure-specific denominator coding.

There are three performance criteria for this measure:

  • Criterion 1. Percentage of patients aged 18 years and older who were screened for tobacco use one or more times within 12 months
  • Criterion 2. Percentage of patients aged 18 years and older who were identified as a tobacco user who received tobacco cessation intervention
  • Criterion 3. Percentage of patients aged 18 years and older who were screened for tobacco use one or more times within 12 months AND who received tobacco cessation intervention if identified as a tobacco user

The denominator of submission criterion 2 is a subset of the resulting numerator for submission criterion 1, as submission criterion 2 is limited to assessing if patients identified as tobacco users received an appropriate tobacco cessation intervention. For all patients, submission criteria 1 and 3 are applicable, but submission criterion 2 will only be applicable for those patients who are identified as tobacco users. Therefore, data for every patient that meets the age and encounter requirements will only be submitted for submission criteria 1 and 3, whereas data submitted for submission criterion 2 will be for a subset of patients who meet the age and encounter requirements, as the denominator has been further limited to those who were identified as tobacco users.