Physicians Urged to Verify Accuracy of CPPI Quality Data
[Posted 10/13/08]

The California Cooperative Healthcare Reporting Initiative (CCHRI) will begin soliciting feedback from physicians as part of the California Physician Performance Initiative (CPPI). Affected physicians will be notified via mail beginning this week. The quality measure scores are based on claims data from patient care provided in 2007. Physicians will be provided with a percentile rank compared to their physician peers, performance scores by measure, and performance scores by patient group.

Physician-specific Medicare scores will not at any time be released to the public by either Medicare or CCHRI. Although CCHRI has no current plans to publicly release physician-specific quality scores related to the treatment of private PPO patients, it is possible that the private health plans could use this information in the future. However, the private health plans would only be provided the scores of their network physicians. CMA will be working closely with CCHRI to vigilantly protect the use of physician information.

We encourage physicians to verify the accuracy of the data used to calculate their scores by requesting their private PPO patient lists at the CCHRI website. Beginning on Friday, October 17, you can visit http://www.cchri.org/cppi to download and complete the “Request for Patient List and Appropriate Data Use” form. The completed forms will be sent to Thomson Reuters (the vendor contracted to collect, standardize, and score the data in strict compliance with HIPAA regulations. Requests must be submitted no later than December 5 and will be processed within five business days of receipt. Additional information about CPPI, including the scoring methodology, can be found at http://www.cchri.org/cppi.

Physicians who review their patient lists and believe their scores to be in error can submit correction requests (with supporting data) within 30 days. Thomson Reuters will log the physician’s request and tabulate the frequency and nature of corrections. A letter acknowledging receipt of the correction request will be mailed to each physician. At the end of the comment period, CCHRI will review the nature of corrections with its Physician Advisory Group and Steering Committee to determine appropriate use of the physician scores.

CPPI received federal funding in 2006 to develop a system for measuring and reporting the quality of health care provided by physicians. CPPI collected data on approximately 25,000 physicians for a limited set of nationally-endorsed quality measures for both Medicare patients and private PPO patients from Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield of California, and United Healthcare.

Contact:Armand Feliciano, 916/444-5532 or afeliciano@cmanet.org.