Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

Why oncologists might have an advantage.

There are two ways to choose which Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) measures to report on, say practices:

Strategy #1: Pick manageable measures: "The 80-percent rule means that we should pick the patients with the diseases we see the least, so we can monitor all the patients to make sure we hit that target," suggests Barbara McAneny, a physician with New Mexico Oncology Hematology Consultants in Albuquerque.

Strategy #2: Pick common measures: "We chose three measures that we see almost every day," says Vanessa Luther, a coder with Racine Emergency Physicians. She's already prepared to add the category II codes when she codes the claims, and her physicians' documentation already includes the quality information she needs.

Oncologists may have a slight leg up because they've already been reporting on patients' conditions as part of Medicare's oncology demonstration project, McAneny notes.

"I actually think this will be kind of fun, as it gives me something else to look at," says Luther. "I am sure I will miss a couple here and there, but my goal is 100 percent."