04 Feb Meeting the HEDIS 2030 Moment: Why Data Readiness Can No Longer Wait

By Mark Coetzer, VP of Business Development at IMAT Solutions

HEDIS is undergoing a fundamental transformation. By 2030, all HEDIS reporting will be fully digital, eliminating traditional hybrid chart review and placing unprecedented demands on data quality, interoperability, and timeliness. This post explains why organizations must act now to prepare for HEDIS 2030, how NCQA’s transition plan accelerates urgency, and how IMAT Intelligence helps health plans and providers build the trusted, audit-ready data foundation required to succeed in a fully digital quality landscape.

HEDIS 2030 Is Not a Future State. It Is a Countdown

For decades, HEDIS has been the backbone of health plan quality measurement, benchmarking, and performance-based payment. But the way HEDIS is measured is changing in ways that will fundamentally reshape how organizations manage data, quality, and compliance.

NCQA has made its direction clear. By Measurement Year 2030, all HEDIS reporting will be fully digital. Traditional hybrid methods, including manual chart review, are being retired and replaced with interoperable, standards-based digital reporting built on HL7 FHIR and Clinical Quality Language.

This is not a minor operational update. It is a structural shift.

Organizations that delay preparation risk finding themselves unable to validate results, pass audits, or meet submission requirements in time. The window for gradual adjustment is closing, and the work required to prepare cannot be compressed into a single measurement year.

What NCQA’s Digital Transition Really Requires

NCQA’s digital HEDIS transition plan is intentionally flexible, but it is also explicit. Organizations must demonstrate readiness through parallel reporting before they can submit digital measures for official reporting. Digital HEDIS does not eliminate audits. Instead, audits evolve to examine data pipelines, mappings, and controls rather than chart abstraction processes.

This means organizations must be able to answer new questions with confidence:

• Can we ingest clinical data electronically at scale across providers and systems?
• Is that data complete, normalized, and current enough to support digital measures?
• Do clinical and claims data align consistently across reporting use cases?
• Can we demonstrate reliability and traceability during audit review?
• Are our data foundations strong enough to support ongoing digital measurement, not just annual submission?

The transition to digital HEDIS is not about flipping a switch. It requires sustained testing, validation, and confidence in the data flowing through the system.

Why Data Quality Has Become the Central Risk

As HEDIS becomes digital, data quality moves from a background concern to the primary determinant of success or failure.

In a hybrid world, gaps could be filled through manual review. In a digital world, missing data stays missing. Inconsistent mappings remain inconsistent. Delayed feeds produce delayed insight. Errors surface faster and propagate further.

NCQA itself has emphasized that data quality is foundational to digital quality measurement. As more organizations rely on electronic clinical data for HEDIS, variation in how data is captured, mapped, and exchanged becomes the biggest source of risk.

Without a trusted data foundation, digital HEDIS does not reduce burden. It increases it.

Why Waiting Is the Riskiest Strategy

Some organizations are tempted to delay action, assuming they can address digital HEDIS closer to 2030. This is a dangerous assumption. Digital readiness cannot be rushed. Parallel reporting requires time. Validation requires repetition. Data pipelines require refinement. Teams require experience working with digital outputs long before they are used for official reporting.

Organizations that wait will face multiple pressures at once: regulatory deadlines, audit scrutiny, internal performance expectations, and limited technical resources. Those pressures compound quickly.

The organizations that succeed in HEDIS 2030 will not be the ones that moved fastest at the end. They will be the ones that started earliest.

How IMAT Intelligence Supports HEDIS 2030 Readiness

IMAT Intelligence was designed to solve the data challenges that digital HEDIS exposes.
Rather than focusing on measure logic, IMAT focuses on whether the data feeding digital measures can be trusted in the first place. The platform unifies clinical and claims data from disparate sources, applies normalization at scale, and creates longitudinal patient records that reflect real-world care delivery.

This foundation enables organizations to:

• Aggregate data across EHRs, HIEs, labs, claims, and encounters.
• Normalize diagnoses, procedures, labs, and medications consistently.
• Validate completeness and timeliness of incoming data streams.
• Identify gaps and inconsistencies before they affect reporting.
• Support parallel reporting with confidence.
• Reduce audit risk by strengthening upstream data integrity.

IMAT helps organizations move from fragmented, reactive data strategies to a unified, standards-based foundation aligned with digital quality requirements.

The Role of the IMAT Health Data Quality Assessment

Many organizations know they have data challenges. Fewer know exactly where those challenges are, how severe they are, or how they will affect digital HEDIS.

The IMAT Health Data Quality Assessment provides a practical starting point. Using the same technology that powers IMAT Intelligence, the assessment evaluates real data across key dimensions such as integration, normalization, completeness, accuracy, and readiness for advanced analytics and digital measurement.

This creates a clear baseline and a roadmap. Not assumptions. Not anecdotes. Evidence.
For organizations preparing for HEDIS 2030, this baseline is essential. It allows leaders to prioritize investments, reduce uncertainty, and move forward with clarity rather than speculation.

HEDIS 2030 Is a Catalyst, Not an Isolated Event
Digital HEDIS is not happening in isolation. It aligns with broader shifts toward value-based care, interoperability mandates, prior authorization reform, and real-time quality measurement.

Organizations that modernize data foundations for HEDIS are not solving a single problem. They are accelerating progress across quality, analytics, population health, compliance, and performance improvement.

Solving data fragmentation once unlocks momentum everywhere else.

The Time to Act Is Now

By 2030, digital HEDIS will be mandatory. But the work to get there must begin now. The organizations that treat HEDIS 2030 as a strategic priority today will reduce risk, lower long-term cost, and gain confidence in their quality reporting. Those that wait will be forced to react under pressure.

Digital quality is coming. The only remaining question is whether your data will be ready when it arrives. If your organization is planning its transition to digital HEDIS, now is the time to establish a clear baseline and roadmap.

Contact IMAT Solutions today to learn how IMAT Intelligence and the Health Data Quality Assessment can help you prepare with confidence.

About the Author
Mark Coetzer is VP of Business Development at IMAT Solutions, with more than 30 years of technology experience and a decade dedicated to healthcare. He brings deep expertise in clinical data integration, interoperability, and population health, and is passionate about helping organizations build trusted data foundations for better care and smarter outcomes.

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