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Take the 'Initiative' to Get Started With PQRS
Published on Fri Feb 18, 2011
By 2015 you'll face penalties for not reporting quality measures.If your practice is not already reporting physician quality measures, this year would be a great time to start. Don't let physician quality reporting bonuses slip through your practice's fingers -- take a look at the 2011 changes.Keep in mind: Physician Quality Reporting is no longer an "initiative" -- and therefore, the previous acronym "PQRI" that we have used for over a year no longer applies. Instead, the program is now referred to as the Physician Quality Reporting System, or PQRS. And that's not all that's changed in the program, CMS representatives said during a Jan. 25 CMS call.Update Your MeasuresYou should already be using the 2011 measures specifications, and not last year's, said CMS's Jacquelyn Kosh-Suber during the call. The 2011 guidelines are all available on the CMS Web site at
www.cms.gov/pqri. The 2011 set includes five new measures for claims [...]