A New Approach to an Old Problem: Tobacco

Quality Matters: A Podcast by NCQA

In this episode of Quality Matters, Jules Reich, NCQA Senior Health Care Analyst in Population Health, and Grace Glennon, NCQA Director of Digital Quality Informatics, join host Andy Reynolds to discuss the latest tool in the long crusade against tobacco use: NCQA’s new HEDIS measure, Tobacco Use Screening and Cessation Intervention (TSC-E).

This measure replaces an outdated survey-based approach. It also facilitates the transition to digital measurement by using the Electronic Clinical Data Systems (ECDS) reporting method to capture, track and help health plans act on data better and faster.

Listen to this episode to discover:

· Why It’s Time to Modernize Tobacco Measures. Learn why NCQA replaced its legacy tobacco survey measure, and how TSC-E aligns with updated clinical guidelines and evidence-based interventions.

· The Full Scope of Tobacco Use. Understand how the new measure covers a wide range of nicotine delivery systems—from cigarettes and vapes, to hookahs and dissolvable gels. Also learn why NCQA counts vaping in the measure of tobacco use, but not in the measure of tobacco cessation.

· The Power of Structured Data in Quality Improvement. Discover how the ECDS reporting method promotes standardized, sharable data across health systems, and why that shift supports more actionable insights, better patient care and data interoperability.

This conversation is key for quality leaders, digital health pioneers and public health champions who are interested in the modernization of quality measurement, advancing data standards and helping providers reduce tobacco use in the populations they serve.

Key Quote:

“ Most people would recognize cigarettes, pipes, cigars, maybe chewing tobacco. A lot of people have seen e-cigarettes and vaping devices out and about.

But there's also hookers and water pipes. There’s cigarillos, small cigars. There’s snuff, there's dissolvable gels, orbs. There’s a lot of products to list.

This measure was developed with all of that in mind. We hope to institute a measure that recognizes the complexity of that, and that providers in different cultural contexts, different regions are able to use the same way.”

Jules Reich

Time Stamps:

(03:08) The Relationship Between Tobacco Screening and Cessation

(06:32) Who's Included: Ages 12 to 98 and Beyond

(09:10) What’s Included: Vapes? It Depends.

(11:30) The Difference ECDS Reporting Makes

(15:24) The Future: From ECDS to Digital Quality Measures
Dive Deeper:

NCQA’s Tobacco Cessation HEDIS Measure

Connect with Jules Reich

Connect with Grace Glennon