Who Sets the Table for Quality Measurement in U.S. Health Care? with Brenna Rabel & Michelle Schreiber

About this episode

The episode discusses how quality measures in U.S. health care are developed and their implications for accountability and patient care.

How do we decide what “good care” looks like, and who gets to choose the scorecard? In this episode of Turn on the Lights, Kedar Mate speaks with Dr. Michelle Schreiber of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and Brenna Rabel of Battelle about how quality measures are developed, adopted, and applied across Medicare and Medicaid programs. They explore why measurement is essential for accountability, patient choice, and improvement, while also acknowledging its vulnerability to politics, feasibility constraints, and “teaching to the test.” Using diabetes and sepsis as examples, they explain how performance cutoffs are established, why “all-or-none” measures often face resistance, and what makes complex measures difficult to report and score. The conversation also addresses efforts to reduce reporting burden, including CMS’s shift from broader MIPS reporting toward MIPS Value Pathways and the expansion of digital quality measurement through FHIR-enabled eCQMs. They conclude with a forward-looking discussion on how artificial intelligence could reduce manual chart abstraction and advance quality measurement, particularly as patient-reported outcomes play a larger role in…

People in this episode

Host: Kedar Mate

Guests: Dr. Michelle Schreiber, Brenna Rabel

Topics covered

• quality measurement
• health care
• Medicare
• Medicaid
• patient outcomes
• artificial intelligence
• value-based care

Keywords

• quality measures
• health care
• Medicare
• Medicaid
• patient choice
• artificial intelligence
• value-based care

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Battelle

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