Physicians will face a 2 percent payment penalty in 2017 if they do not successfully report for Medicare’s Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) this year. As the AMA works to lessen this burden, you can take advantage of a reporting option that can help improve patient outcomes while simultaneously lessening your chances of incurring penalties.
Clinical data registries provide meaningful clinical information to improve the quality and value of health care, according to a recent report from the AMA Council on Medical Service. The National Quality Registry Network (NQRN®), a voluntary network of organizations that operate registries is coordinating the nation’s 100-plus registries to increase the usefulness of the information contained within them.
PQRS reporting options included registries in 2008 and expanded these to include the more robust Qualified Clinical Data Registry (QCDR) option in 2014. For 2015, physicians have the option to report through the QCDR, which is a clinical registry that passes qualification requirements, including providing regular feedback reports to participants, as well as collecting and submitting PQRS and non-PQRS performance measures, to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
In 2014, 36 organizations with clinical registries successfully qualified as QCDRs— a substantial number of those who applied and more than one-quarter of all known U.S. national clinical registries. For 2015, CMS continues to expand the QCDR program with additional requirements, including public reporting and growth in the number of outcomes and other measures. It is expected that the 2015 QCDR program will continue to promote the role of clinical registries in health care improvement.
According to a recent CMS report, 99 percent of PQRS registry participants in 2012 satisfactorily reported at least one individual measure, compared to only 83 percent for the PQRS program as a whole. In 2012, 11 percent of PQRS participants used the PQRS registry option and continues to grow as CMS is moving away from claims based reporting. Although the 2015 PQRS program no longer has incentives available—only penalties—physicians using the registry option successfully completed the PQRS submission process at a higher rate than with the claims or electronic health record submission options.
Learn more about avoiding penalties with this reporting option at AMA Wire®.
