This Joint Commission Guide for Data Entry of Chart-Abstracted Measures is not intended to repeat information that is contained within the Joint Commission’s Specifications Manual for Joint Commission National Quality Measures or the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services' Hospital Outpatient Quality Reporting Specifications Manual. 

Refer to the above Specifications Manuals for, among other items, information concerning the initial patient population, sampling requirements, measure information forms, measure algorithms, patient-level data elements, ICD and medication code tables.

It is of primary importance that all organizations use the appropriate version of manuals for the submission period when identifying the initial population and sample size, collecting the required patient-level data, and processing it through the algorithm for each measure.  This will ensure that the data are standardized and comparable across organizations.

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