New Versions of the Cypress eCQM Testing Tool Just Released

[Colbert, Jean D.]

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) just released the newest versions of the electronic clinical quality measure (eCQM) testing tool, Cypress v2.7.0 and the Cypress v2.6.1 Patch Release, on Thursday, July 23 2015. An update to the Cypress Validation Utility was also issued with this latest release. Please find the details of the tools update below:

1. Cypress v2.7.0 -- Pretesting Version Only

·       Supports 2015 eCQM Annual Update

-   Aligns with the May 2015 release and the June corrections of Eligible Hospital and Eligible Professional eCQM specifications published by CMS

·       Aligns with HL7 QRDA Category I Release 3 specification

·       Is not initially available for certification because the 2014 Certification Edition only applies to the current HL7 QRDA R2 specification. This version is a tool for testing the 2015 measure specifications and the new QRDA R3 requirements for CMS submissions

·       Uses Measure Bundle v2.7.0

2. Cypress v2.6.1 Patch Release

·       Supports improvements in QRDA validation testing

·       Will replace v2.6 and continue to be available for use in certification throughout 2015

·       Uses Cypress v2.6.1 to pretest and certify 2014 Eligible Hospital and Eligible Professional eCQM packages

·       Evaluates QRDA compliance against the HL7 QRDA Errata IG published in 2014

-   Uses Measure Bundle v2.6.0 that was issued with this release

3. Optional Cypress Validation Utility
   • Separate and optional utility for testing QRDA conformance against the CMS QRDA Combined Implementation Guides (IGs)
   • Supports both the 2015 and 2016 CMS QRDA Combined IG specifications
   • Checks additional QRDA constraints required for CMS submission that are not tested with Cypress Certification which tests compliance to the base HL7 QRDA IG

Visit the Cypress website for more information and detailed notes on the release.

Please send questions or feedback about Cypress to ta...@projectcypress.org.