Medical groups with 100 physicians or more were given an extra three days to register for the CMS Physician Quality Reporting System, formerly known as the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative. If these groups fail to sign up by Friday, they will be subject to a 1% cut in Medicare fee-for-service payments in 2015 under the value-based payment modifier program mandated by Section 3007 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
The extension also applies to groups seeking an “administrative” exemption to PQRS reporting requirements. Groups choosing this option would not do their own quality-measure reporting but instead will have the CMS collect their practice data via an “administrative claims-based reporting mechanism.” According to the California Medical Association, groups that go this route will be automatically evaluated from claims data on 19 quality measures and can avoid an additional 1.5% PQRS-associated penalty by doing so.