What dQMGrid is
In one sentence
dQMGrid is an open-source measure calculation tool for the digital quality measures CMS converted from eCQMs — one that accounts for every patient it did not count.
It runs the published dQM packages exactly as written, against real FHIR exports from working EHRs and enterprise data warehouses. For every patient it does not count, it records which retrieve came back empty, which data element was missing, which source it came from, and who owns the fix: the standards, the EHR vendor, or the site.
Three parts, one project
Section titled “Three parts, one project”The calculator
Section titled “The calculator”An execution environment for the CMS dQM packages. A run has four stages — Load, Conform, Evaluate and Account — described in How it works. It evaluates on two independent open engines: MITRE’s fqm-execution behind the Data Exchange for Quality Measures (DEQM) server, and the HAPI FHIR Clinical Reasoning module.
The rules
Section titled “The rules”Real exports need adapting before the measures can read them. dQMGrid does that with rules, not code: each rule is a FHIR artifact — a CodeSystem fragment, a ConceptMap, a profile declaration or a derivation — with a Provenance resource naming who reviewed it. Rules are classed by how much they change the meaning of the data, and only some classes count in a reported result unless a named reviewer has signed them. See Rules and signing.
Because rules are organized by data source, not by measure, one signed rule for a vendor’s product reaches every site on that product.
The account
Section titled “The account”Most calculators show you the patients they counted. dQMGrid also shows you the ones it did not, and the reason for each. That turns data gaps into a list of findings routed to whoever can fix them. Try it in the live run report.
What it is not
Section titled “What it is not”- Not a new measure language. It runs CMS’s published CQL and changes no measure logic.
- Not a re-implementation. Measure logic is executed by open reference engines.
- Not a replacement for EHR vendors or measure developers. It is the layer between them that tells each of them what to fix — and lets an ACO or registry use FHIR without waiting for every vendor to be fully conformant first.
- Not a closed product. The calculator core, conformance harness and test decks will be released under an open-source license (Apache License 2.0 proposed). See the open-source model.
Where it stands
Section titled “Where it stands”The coverage page lists all 74 published dQM packages and the status of each. The roadmap states what is built, what is designed but not yet built, and what is planned.