Under CMS’ proposed rules released last week for hospital and physician payment policies in 2012, the agency provides details of pilot programs aimed at testing online reporting of clinical quality data from electronic health records, InformationWeek reports.
The pilot programs are intended to pave the way for health care providers to submit quality reporting data online from EHRs to a CMS website. The agency is not yet prepared to accept such data online.
The pilot program for physicians — called the Physicians Quality Reporting System-Medicare EHR Incentive Pilot — is the result of CMS’ push to move toward a system that lets physicians report the same information for meaningful use and for the agency’s Physician Quality Reporting System (Terry, InformationWeek, 7/6).
Details of Programs
The PQRS initiative was launched in 2007 and formerly was known as the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative. It provides incentives to physicians participating in Medicare who report certain quality measures. Meanwhile, the 2009 federal stimulus package provides Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments to health care providers who demonstrate meaningful use of certified EHR systems (iHealthBeat, 6/29/10).
Pilot Program Details
Physicians who sign up for the pilot program also must participate in the PQRS program.
Participants would need to submit data on nine quality measures from the meaningful use program that also would fulfill PQRS incentive criteria. Health care providers would submit data for a full calendar year through their software vendor, if CMS lets the vendor reformat the information and send it to the agency, or directly from their CMS-approved EHR system.
Meanwhile, CMS is calling on hospitals to participate in an electronic quality reporting program that involves submitting outpatient data online.
According to CMS, the program will help hospitals meet meaningful use criteria and establish a system for hospitals to report data electronically under the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program (InformationWeek, 7/6).
Source: iHealthBeat
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