If you’re going to report quality measures to Medicare, clearly this is the year to start.
Word is making its way out that physician practices must participate in some way in Medicare’s physician quality reporting system (PQRS) this year – or face a -1.5% “adjustment” to their 2015 Medicare fees.
The good news: This year only, you can sign up to have the government track your quality measures for you.
The bad news: information has so far been scarce about how this option is supposed to work.
Now information about the program – introduced in the final 2013 physician fee schedule as the “administrative claims reporting option” – is beginning to filter out from the agency. You’ll be able to sign up for it between July and October this year, and the deadline is Oct. 15, CMS
states.
“The CMS-calculated administrative claims reporting option requires no effort beyond signing up,” the agency says. The program is available to both individual providers and large groups (more than 100 eligible professionals billing under the same tax ID number).
In other words, just by signing up, both individual providers and large groups can avoid the 2015 1.5% penalty. And large groups can keep from getting dinged by the new 1% value modifier fee adjustment that also will take effect in 2015 for practices that don’t participate in PQRS this year.
CMS promises to provide more details on this reporting method during a June 7 provider call. Find out more about that and sign up
here.