Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

Slow down on pay for reporting/performance, senator demands.

You could gain some breathing room on changes to the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) next year and avoid any pay-for-performance (P4P) plans, if a new bill becomes law.

Sens. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) introduced The Voluntary Medicare Quality Reporting Act, which would require the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to spend a few more years on a more careful process to develop a voluntary quality-reporting program.

The Cardin-Specter bill would require the Health and Human Services Secretary to report to Congress on the six-month PQRI program that starts July 1, and launch demonstrations to figure out the best ways for you to report quality data. You would be able to keep reporting on 2007's quality measures into 2008. Medicare would have to work with the American Medical Association to figure out which areas need quality measures. A permanent voluntary quality-reporting program would start January 2010.