On November 13, 2009, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that, as part of the 2008 Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI), it paid more than $92 million in incentive payments to physicians and other eligible professionals who successfully reported quality data.
According to CMS, the number of eligible professionals who earned an incentive payment in 2008 increased by one-third from 2007. For the 2007 PQRI, CMS paid approximately $36 million in incentives.
Among other things, CMS also reports in a Press Release and Fact Sheet that for the 2008 PQRI:
- The average incentive amount for individual professionals is over $1,000 with the largest payment to an eligible professional totaling over $98,000.
- More than 162,800 professionals participated and over 85,000 physicians and other eligible professionals met statutory requirements for satisfactory reporting.
- Nearly 8 percent of the PQRI participants attempted to send their data to CMS through a medical registry. Of those eligible professionals, nearly 96 percent met the statutory requirements for satisfactory reporting and qualified for an incentive payment.
In addition, CMS reports that it has re-run the data used to make its initial 2007 PQRI incentive payment determinations due to several data issues. Based on the re-run data, CMS has identified over 3,900 additional eligible professionals that will receive 2007 PQRI incentive payments. According to CMS, the payments average over $860 per eligible professional and will be made in November 2009.
Finally, CMS points out that providers can access their confidential feedback reports at the Tax Identification Number level by visiting a secure PQRI portal at http://www.qualitynet.org/pqri
Fore more information, see the Press Release and Fact Sheet.
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