Medicare Hosts Conference Call on New Quality Reporting Initiative
[Posted 03/29/07]

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on Tuesday hosted the first in a series of conference calls to help physicians understand and prepare for Medicare’s Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI). Physicians who were unable to participate in the call can access an on-demand audio replay of the call by calling 888/348-4629 (passcode 549030). The audio replay will be available until April 10. A written transcript of the call is also available at the PQRI website, http://www.cms.hhs.gov/pqri.

The next PQRI conference call will be in early April. Details will be published in CMA Alert as soon as they become available.

The quality reporting initiative, which begins in July, establishes financial incentives – bonus payments of 1.5 percent of total allowed charges for covered Medicare physician services – for physicians who participate in this voluntary program. Initially, performance targets, or actual “pay for performance,” will not be part of the formula.

Physicians (and their staff) can also learn more about PQRI at CMA’s 10th Annual Health Care Leadership Academy. Among the academy’s many valuable breakout sessions is “Medicare Pay for Performance: What We Know, How to Prepare.” The workshop will be taught by Ron Bangasser, M.D., past president of CMA and one of the leaders of the Integrated Healthcare Association’s P4P Initiative. This workshop is just one of several Leadership Academy sessions on reimbursement and practice management issues.

For more information, visit http://www.cmanet.org/leadership or call 800/795-2262.