Do you have time for a Quality Minute about kidney health?

This is another article in an ongoing series of quick tips designed to be read in 60 seconds or less and provide your practice with information about performance in key areas.

Kidney Health Evaluation for Patients with Diabetes (KED)

Did you know that kidney disease affects 35.5 million adults in the U.S., but 90% of them don’t know they have it? The HEDIS^® measure Kidney Health Evaluation for Patients with Diabetes (KED) was developed to improve kidney disease testing in people with diabetes, because diabetes is a key risk factor for developing kidney disease.

Tips to successfully close the KED gap

• Make sure to complete both the estimated glomerular filtration rate, or eGFR, and urine albumin creatinine ratio, or uACR. The uACR is identified by both a quantitative urine albumin test and a urine creatinine test completed less than four days apart.
• Avoid billing *82044 (semiquantitative urine albumin) as HEDIS no longer recognizes this code for closing the KED gap. Instead, use CPT codes *82043 (quantitative urine albumin) and *82570 (urine creatinine) to close the uACR portion of the KED measure.
• Check the patient’s coverage to ensure you’re sending them to in-network labs for testing. This will ensure we receive the required documentation to close the KED gap. The KED measure can only be closed through claims and supplemental data that have passed audit.
• If your physician organization is approved, send your KED data electronically through supplemental data to close the KED quality gap.

HEDIS^®, which stands for Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set, is a registered trademark of the National Committee for Quality Assurance or NCQA.