Uniform Data System is an annual reporting system that provides standardized information about the performance and operation of health centers delivering health care services to undeserved communities and vulnerable populations.

Its core components include patient demographics, staffing and utilization, selected diagnoses and services rendered, quality of care indicators, health outcomes and disparities, and finances and revenues of awardee health centers. UDS data on patient characteristics and clinical conditions are used to evaluate and improve health-center performance, ensure compliance with legislative mandates, and identify trends in health centers’ impact on expanding access, addressing health disparities, improving quality, and reducing health care costs.

The Uniform Data System (UDS) report is required for the following health centers:

• Health Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) awardees that receive federal funds under the Health Center Program authorized by section 330 of the Public Health Service (PHS) Act (42 U.S.C. 254b), which include the FQHC or Community Health Center (CHC) (330(e)) program, the Migrant Health Center (MHC) (330(g)) program, the Health Care for the Homeless (HCH) (330(h)) program, and/or the Public Housing Primary Care (PHPC) (330(i)) program.
• Health Center Program look-alikes, which are health centers that do not receive federal funding but meet the requirements for designation under the program.
• Certain health centers that are funded under the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Bureau of Health Workforce (BHW).

Reporting Methodology

The UDS report is completed annually by health centers, including Health Center Program awardees (under section 330), Health Center Program look-alikes, and BHW sites operating in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the Pacific Basin. These health centers are required to report UDS data for the entire calendar year via the HRSA Electronic Handbook system

Each year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) makes updates to the electronic specifications of the Clinical Quality Measures approved for submission in CMS programs. The electronic Clinical Quality Measures (eCQMs) consist of codes and terms drawn from standard vocabularies such as SNOMED CT®, RxNorm, and ICD-10-CM to represent the clinical concepts found in EHR patient data as defined by the eCQMs (e.g., patients with diabetes, clinical visit). It is important to check with EHR vendor to ensure compliance with the most recent eCQMs to ensure Healthcare organization are tracking and reporting on the correct data for this and future reporting years.

Santeware Business Intelligence team deploys tested techniques and approaches to develop UDS specific analytics that help drive quality and data-driven decision making within Healthcare Organization. Santeware understands that each Healthcare organization are unique and require a certain level of flexibility in capturing and reporting data. The challenge with UDS has always been remaining proactive in monitoring the information for accuracy and performing regular audits to ensure compliance with HRSA guidelines. Failure to implement these quality measures results in last minute reviews, stacks of corrections, and frustrating workload at very end.

Santeware provide expertise within UDS domain in following areas:

• A comprehensive usage of platform for reporting and analytics
• Best of class Visualizations using Power BI & Tableau
• eCQM alignment for clinical quality measures per organization
• We can work with your external vendors to establish external data connections for building a robust and inclusive data warehouse for reporting and analytics.
• Robust mapping support for custom data capture
• Consistent results presented in a variety of formats and views

At Santeware Healthcare Solutions, we are excited about our UDS Quality measure reporting services and it’s why we provide the right skillset and expertise with all of the tools and code necessary to help you implement UDS Business Intelligence projects as quickly as possible. If you’re looking for extra help creating or managing your UDS reporting Infrastructure across EMR , our professional services team is readily available to assist you during every stage of building & reporting the UDS data.