Health IT Research & Analysis
Datasets

Certified Health Information Technology Reported by Clinicians for Promoting Interoperability Performance

Date Range

2019-2023

Last Updated

June 2023

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In 2011, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) established the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs to encourage eligible professionals (EPs), eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals (CAHs) to adopt, implement, upgrade, and demonstrate meaningful use of certified electronic health record technology (CEHRT).

To continue a commitment to promoting and prioritizing interoperability and exchange of health care data, CMS renamed the EHR Incentive Programs to the Medicare and Medicaid Promoting Interoperability Programs in April 2018. This change moved the programs beyond the existing requirements of meaningful use to a new phase of EHR measurement with an increased focus on interoperability and improving patient access to health information.

The “Certified Health Information Technology Reported by Clinicians for Promoting Interoperability Performance” datasets combine CMS Quality Payment Program (QPP) participation data with the ONC Certified Health IT Product List (CHPL). The QPP Experience datasets provide the certified EHR technology (CEHRT) reported by all clinicians who reported for the Promoting Interoperability performance category, beginning in program year 2019. This data field can be merged with the CHPL data to provide specific certified product details.

These datasets provide a minimum set of data fields to further combine these data with the full QPP experience data, full CHPL dataset, and other datasets. The documentation and notes describe those data fields necessary for linking to other data. See Methods and Notes for further details on dataset construction and data linkages.

Data FieldData Description
provider_keyRandom unique key assigned to each row. See QPP Experience Report Public Use File Data Dictionary.
npiThe National Provider Identifier assigned to the clinician when they enrolled in Medicare. Multiple rows for the same NPI indicate multiple TIN/NPI combinations and/or multiple certified products reported by the clinician. See QPP Experience Report Public Use File Data Dictionary.
grp_keyKey generated to identify unique clinician practice groups. This can be used as a proxy for group TIN. It uses the data variables: practice_size, practice_state_or_us_territory, allowed_charges, and beneficiaries OR medicare patients from the QPP Experience Report Public Use File to approximate unique groupings of NPIs. These four data variables identify practice groups with an over 99% accuracy.
practice_state_or_us_territoryThe State or United States (US) territory code location of the TIN associated with the clinician. See QPP Experience Report Public Use File Data Dictionary.
practice_sizeCount of clinicians associated with TIN from the second segment of the MIPS eligibility determination period. See QPP Experience Report Public Use File Data Dictionary.
clinician_specialtyThe specialty description is an identifier corresponding to the type of service that the clinician submitted most on their Medicare Part B claims for this TIN/NPI combination. See QPP Experience Report Public Use File Data Dictionary.
participation_typeIndicates the level at which performance data was collected, submitted or reported for the final score attributed to the clinician. See QPP Experience Report Public Use File Data Dictionary.
cehrt_id_cleanThis is a unique identifier generated by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and identifies a specific bundle of software or EHR. A small percentage of CEHRT IDs submitted as part of QPP reporting were deemed invalid when matched against ONC’s official CEHRT ID database. Invalid IDs were matched to the ONC CEHRT ID database using a fuzzy matching algorithm and deemed accurate with a LV of 1 or 2. This corrected the ID in almost all cases as minor imputation errors during submission likely resulted in the invalid IDs. Some manual corrections were necessary.
cehrt_id_origThis is a unique identifier generated by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and identifies a specific bundle of software or EHR. The CEHRT ID is a 15-character alpha- numeric string which can be found on the CHPL website. This is the CEHRT ID included in the data that contributed to the clinician’s final score. See QPP Experience Report Public Use File Data Dictionary.
chpl_idThe Certified Health IT Product List (CHPL) ID. CHPL IDs are unique to each certified product listing. This data taken directly from CHPL.
developer_nameThe developer name associated with the certified product listing. This data taken directly from CHPL.
product_nameThe product name associated with the certified product listing. This data taken directly from CHPL.
product_database_idThe product database ID associated with the certified product listing. This is used as part of the CHPL Public APIs to identify unique certified product listings. It can used to fetch data for the uni que certified product listing using the CHPL website and its public APIs. This data taken directly from CHPL.
certification_editionThe Health IT Certification Edition associated with the certified product listing. This can be the 2011, 2014, 2015, or 2015 Cures Update Certification Editions. This data taken directly from CHPL.

Construction of the file

The QPP Experience datasets include a field “PI CEHRT ID”. This ID is generated by clinicians through a tool hosted by ONC on the CHPL website. Clinicians select the certified technology from the CHPL database (using the website interface) they used during their performance reporting period and the CHPL generates a unique ID they can submit as part of their QPP submission. This ID is maintained by ONC and its contractors in the CHPL database.

The CHPL through its public APIs and a website tool enables queries of single CEHRT IDs. Full access to the entire list of all CEHRT IDs ever generated is not available publicly through the CHPL website. The merge between the CEHRT ID list and the QPP Experience data was completed by ONC and provided here for public use. The data is updated regularly to reflect current certified product listing information.

A small percentage of the IDs in the QPP Experience data (data field = PI CEHRT ID) were found to be invalid when merged with the full CEHRT ID database. Invalid IDs were matched to the ONC CEHRT ID database using a fuzzy matching algorithm and deemed accurate with a LV of 1 or 2. This corrected the ID in almost all cases as minor imputation errors during submission likely resulted in the invalid IDs. Some manual verifications were necessary.

The datafiles made available here include two data fields: (1) cehrt_id_orig and (2) cehrt_id_clean. The field, cehrt_id_orig, is the CEHRT ID that appears for the unique clinician in the respective year of QPP Experience data (as PI CEHRT ID). If the CEHRT ID was found to be invalid and corrected using the above process, that updated, “clean” ID is available as cehrt_id_clean. In almost all cases cehrt_id_clean and cehrt_id_orig are the same (the submitted ID is valid.) If they don’t, cehrt_id_orig was found to be invalid. It is recommended that data users use cehrt_id_clean for all subsequent analysis; cehrt_id_orig is included as an artifact of the data merge and for provenance.

Data linkages

Data variables that can be used for additional data linkages are below.

Provider_key = Unique variable in the QPP Experience datasets that represents a unique clinician/group pairing. This variable and NPI can be used to identify clinicians that participated as part of multiple groups or through multiple submissions.

NPI = The National Provider Identifier assigned to the clinician when they enrolled in Medicare. This is a unique, common identifier used to link health care providers across health care datasets where health care providers are identified.

chpl_id = The Certified Health IT Product List (CHPL) ID. CHPL IDs are unique to each certified product listing. This can be used to merge these data with additional data variables in the CHPL using the downloadable CHPL data or the CHPL public APIs.

product_database_id = The product database ID associated with the certified product listing. This is used as part of the CHPL public APIs to identify unique certified product listings. It can used to fetch data for the unique certified product listing using the CHPL website and its public APIs.