Medicare PQRI needs serious improvement, AMA says

A new AMA survey suggests that the CMS needs to do some serious work on their Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) if they want it to be effective.

More than 6 out of 10 physicians who were surveyed found the program to be difficult, and a paltry 22 percent were able to actually download and review their feedback report. Of those that were able to access their report, less than half found it instructive.

Meanwhile, more than half of physicians who asked for help from CMS found its responsiveness to their requests to be "none to low."  Worse still, physicians who started reporting in July 2007 didn't receive their reports until 18 months later, which was much too late for them to actually respond to any errors. And the 18 month delay very well may continue, with data submitted in 2008 not likely arrive until sometime in 2010.

To learn more about the PQRI problems:
- read this Healthcare Finance News piece [1]

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CMS to pay more than $36M in quality reporting bonuses [2]
CMS tightening quality-reporting measures [3]
MGMA: Medicare quality reporting costly [4]
AMA issues first health insurer report card [5]