Your peers earned an average bonus of $1,000 per provider for participation in the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) in 2008, CMS announced.
PQRI bonuses, equaling 1.5% of an individual provider's Medicare charges, have been arriving at physician practices and bank accounts over the last couple weeks. More than 153,600 providers participated in PQRI, CMS says, but 55.3% of those reporting successfully earned a bonus -- which is better than the previous reporting year.
In 2007, 52% of physicians participating in PQRI earned a bonus (about $635 on average per provider). Physician reported quality measures for only six months that year.
Bonuses are expected to be much higher for the 2009 and 2010 reporting years. Incentives are equal to 2% of a provider's Medicare charges.
As for 2008, bonuses totaled more than $92 million ($36 million was paid out for 2007).
We'll have more analysis of the 2008 reporting period in our next issue of Part B News.
[Note: The headline and story were revised after CMS released corrected statistics.]