Group practices continue to cite administrative difficulties in reporting data for Medicare's Physician Quality Reporting Initiative, the Medical Group Management Association found in a new survey of its members.
The PQRI is a voluntary program that allows physicians and other eligible healthcare professionals to receive incentive payments for reporting data on quality measures related to services furnished to Medicare beneficiaries.
The MGMA's research, which was conducted in January, includes feedback from 429 respondents representing 11,419 providers in medical practice. In particular, the practices complained about delays in receiving “feedback reports” from the CMS, which provide details on how well a practice reported PQRI data on specific measures. Participation was open to the group's entire membership.
The MGMA's research found that fewer than half of the practices that attempted to participate in the 2008 PQRI were able to successfully access their feedback report from the CMS, a decline from the 51% that were able to retrieve their 2007 PQRI feedback report. In addition, 67% were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the 2008 PQRI report's effectiveness in providing guidance to improve patient care outcomes.
“Similar to our earlier PQRI research, our members continue to express frustration over the unreasonable lag time between reporting PQRI data and receipt of the results,” said MGMA President and CEO William Jessee in a written statement.
In its report, the MGMA recommended that the CMS be given additional resources to provide PQRI feedback on a more frequent, perhaps quarterly basis, instead of just every year.
This is the second time the MGMA has conducted research on member experiences with the PQRI.
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