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PQRI: should you take part?
Director of Policy Analysis, Community Oncology Alliance, Washington, DC
After the passage of the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services implemented the Physician Voluntary Reporting Program in July 2007, an incentive program that allows practices to earn a bonus on Medicare billings. Now called the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI), it includes 119 measures for which physicians collect and report their practice data. The program is largely considered a precursor to a mandatory pay-for-performance program Medicare will roll out, probably within the next two years. Although most people agree that efforts to improve quality and standardize physician quality measures are beneficial, many are skeptical that PQRI will achieve the desired outcome. But documenting quality is in everyone’s future. In this article, the author takes a look down that path.
| Commun Oncol 2008;5:139–140 | full text |  67 kb |