We have relied on the CDC Office on Smoking and Health to provide reliable and consistent information about tobacco use trends. That resource has just been eliminated.

It is necessary for clinicians, medical group practices, ACOs, health systems, and insurers to measure tobacco use in the populations. With the generation of local data, we may be able to improve quit rates and maximize revenue. The business case for optimizing performance in tobacco cessation is made here.

Capturing tobacco use status in the EMR

When EMRs are surveyed to report on frequency of tobacco use among patients who seek care, the results are usually lower than the reported statewide prevalence of tobacco use. Try this yourself. This reflects a defect in tobacco use identification.

Take a look at your workflow to determine where there may be gaps. See the Exemplar section for best practices.

Consider also the many sources of nicotine available. Over 10% of patients use two or more types. Are you able to capture this level of detail?

Capturing treatment data

Capturing your outcomes

NCQA Measures

Studies at several medical centers show that tobacco cessation counselling is billed at less than 2% of the opportunities. Clinicians are missing out on billable services and the chance to improve patient health status. See sections on Managment and Reimbursement to improve your performance and your revenue capture.

How effective are you? There is wide variation in success rates of individual doctors, practices and medical groups. Where do you stand? If you don’t track your performance, you will never learn what you can do to improve. See the Exemplar section for best practices.

As you know NCQA has ended its use of CAHPS to measure tobacco cessation. This measure was unreliable from the start. See the NCQA file.

The good news NCQA is considering a HEDIS measure for measurement in 2026.

1. Tobacco Use Screening. The percentage of persons 12 years of age and older who were screened for tobacco use once or more during the measurement period.

2. Cessation Intervention. The percentage of persons 12 years of age and older who were identified as a tobacco user during the measurement period and who received tobacco cessation intervention during the measurement period or the 180 days prior to the measurement period.

the specifications are here