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PHYSICIAN QUALITY REPORTING INITIATIVE (PQRI)

We at Westfield Family Physicians want to be on the cutting edge of healthcare. To achieve that goal we began participation in July 2007 in a national program designed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (or CMS) to report quality healthcare measures. Please see excerpts from the article below from the AMA website or click the link at the bottom of the page for the full article.

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Participation Tools: Medicare Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI)

On July 1, 2007, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will launch the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) - a voluntary reporting program that encourages quality improvement through the use of clinical performance measures on a variety of clinical conditions. Physicians and other eligible professionals who successfully report on a designated set of quality measures through claims submitted for services provided from July 1 to December 31, 2007, may earn a bonus payment, subject to a cap, of 1.5% of total allowed charges for covered Medicare physician fee schedule services. Those considering participating in the program should carefully review the PQRI instructions and FAQs posted on the CMS PQRI website at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/pqri.

To assist physicians and other eligible professionals who may elect to participate in this program, the CMS, in collaboration with the American Medical Association, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc, and the National Committee for Quality Assurance, has developed participation tools. The tools are designed to:

aid in the selection of measures by physicians and other eligible professionals wishing to participate in the program
link to background information on the quality measures, including both the rationale and evidence base for each measure
aid in the data collection required to report clinical performance data

Many of the measures in the PQRI were developed by the AMA-convened Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement®, in collaboration with the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) and/or a medical specialty society. For additional information on the Consortium including additional background information on the quality measures with both the rationale and evidence base for each measure, please visit www.physicianconsortium.org.

Click here for full article. http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/17432.html

- AUGUST 2007 -

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