Senators Commend CMS Changes to Physician Quality Reporting Initiative

On April 18, 2008, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and Ranking Member Charles Grassley issued a Press Release commending the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) recent improvements to the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI). In fact, in the Press Release, Chairman Max Baucus states:

"Expanding the physician quality reporting initiative will improve care and encourage the development of more meaningful, evidence-based ways to measure quality...The improvements CMS is making will drive the creation of better models for collecting and analyzing clinical information. This move is a step in the right direction on the long, careful path toward linking physician payments to the quality of care they provide.  We still have a ways to go, but I applaud CMS for its efforts..."

On April 17, 2008, CMS issued a Press Release announcing the steps that it has taken to encourage physicians and other eligible professionals to take part in PQRI. Some of those steps arise from the Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP Extension Act of 2007, which authorized CMS to establish alternative reporting criteria and reporting periods for the reporting of measures groups and for the submission of data on PQRI quality measures through clinical data registries.