Webinars

EDPMA Webinar: Build Your ECAT Tiger Team Before You Need It: A practical session on what the new CMS measure demands, and how to get ahead of it. | August 19, 2026, 12:30 p.m. (ET)

Hospitals aren’t short on data. They’re short on clarity. And CMS just attached a price to that gap. ‎The Emergency Care Access and Timeliness (ECAT) eCQM, finalized in the 2026 OPPS rule, ‎holds hospitals accountable for ED boarding, throughput, and patients leaving without being ‎seen. Voluntary reporting begins in 2027, mandatory reporting in 2028, and payment penalties ‎follow in 2030.‎

The challenge was never the data. It was how organizations were reading it. Medians and ‎averages told a comfortable story while patients fell through the edges. CMS just made those ‎patients the ones who count.‎

ECAT is not simply another regulatory mandate. It requires aligning hospital and health system ‎priorities across departments whose decisions collectively shape results: EMS, emergency ‎medicine, hospital medicine, and inpatient nursing. Because patient flow affects everything that ‎matters: quality, outcomes, equity, workforce well-being, patient experience, and cost. ECAT is ‎an opportunity to align around a common purpose: better care.‎

This session moves past, “Did we meet it?” to the harder questions: why, and what’s next? ‎Attendees will leave with a clear picture of the operational variables driving performance gaps ‎and concrete steps to build the team and infrastructure needed to close them, before the ‎deadlines make that decision.‎

Key Learning Objectives:

• ‎Evaluate where you stand: See what ECAT requires under the 2026 CMS OPPS rule, ‎and why averages and medians won’t tell the whole story.‎
• Find what’s really driving the gap: Identify the operational variables, such as time of ‎day, ED zone, acuity, and mode of arrival, behind ECAT performance failures.‎
• ‎Stop pointing at the ED alone: Differentiate why boarding and throughput problems ‎often start outside the emergency department, and how to look at the full patient journey.‎
• ‎Build your team now: Determine who belongs at the table and the governance structure ‎that turns data into action.‎
• ‎Don’t wait for 2028 to decide for you: Develop a first-week plan for establishing a ‎baseline and getting started now.‎

Faculty:

• ‎Alan Eisman – Executive Vice President (d2i) & Senior Executive Advisor (ESO)
• Mark Canada, MHA, MSN, RN – Senir Vice President of Integrated Operations (d2i / ESO)

Register Now!