2007 Medicare Quality Reporting Tool Kits Now Available
[Posted 06/21/07]

On July 1, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’s (CMS) will begin its Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI), a voluntary reporting program that encourages quality improvement through the use of clinical performance measures.

To help physicians successfully participate in the program, CMS, in collaboration with the AMA, recently published a PQRI tool kit. The tool kit, available at the PQRI website, contains educational resources and measure-specific worksheets designed to walk the user step by step through reporting for each measure. The tool kit will be expanded as new educational resources become available.

PQRI 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. The current reporting period is for claims with dates of service from July 1 through December 31. Claims must be received on or before February 29, 2008, to be included in the bonus payment calculation.

Contact: Sandra Bressler, 415/882-5171 or sbressler@cmanet.org.