PQRS updates for 2014
Texas Medical Association officials rec- ommend physicians get familiar with recent changes in Medicare’s Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) for 2014 and take advantage of new qual- ity reporting opportunities to avoid the financial penalties for not participating in the program.
In 2015, physicians who did not re- port quality data to PQRS in 2013 will see a 1.5-percent cut in their payments. That penalty increases to 2 percent in 2016 and subsequent years.
New for 2014, individual physicians
and group practices have more ways to submit their quality data, for instance, through different kinds of electronic health record systems. Physicians also now can report their
quality data via a qualified clinical data registry (QCDR) to meet their PQRS re- quirements. The registries, approved by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), collect clinical data on patients to track diseases, for example, in an effort to promote quality improve- ment. Physicians also can use the QCDR to report quality measures for other pay- ers and not just for Medicare. Also new for this year, physician
groups of 25 or more have the option to submit patient experience data through the Clinician and Group Consumer As- sessment of Healthcare Providers Survey via CMS-certified survey vendors. Among other updates, TMA officials noted adjustments to certain reporting criteria. For example, individual physi- cians now must report on nine separate measures, instead of three, to qualify for a bonus payment and avoid the penalty in 2016. The measures must fall within at least three National Quality Strategy
domains: patient safety, personal and caregiver-center experience and out- comes, communication and care coordi- nation, effective clinical care, communi- ty/population health, and efficiency and cost reduction.
CMS also added 37 new individual quality measures to PQRS for the 2014 program year, while retiring 45 mea- sures, and urged physicians to use the most current version of the measures list to fulfill their reporting requirements. More detailed information about PQRS is available online through CMS at
www.cms.gov/Medicare/Quality-Ini tiatives-Patient-Assessment-Instruments/ PQRS.
Also take advantage of the PQRS
tools and resources TMA has created to assist you at
www.texmed.org/pqrs. n
Amy Lynn Sorrel is associate editor of Texas Medicine. You can reach her by telephone at (800) 880-1300, ext. 1392, or (512) 370-1392; by fax at (512) 370-1629; or by email at
amy.sorrel@
texmed.org.
June 2014 TEXAS MEDICINE 33
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