The new health system reform law includes a number of quality provisions that physician organizations say are not ready for primetime and won’t be ready in the time frame established by Congress.
Explore this issue:
June 2010The two sections of most concern to medical associations involve the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) and the creation of a value-based payment modifier under the Medicare physician fee schedule.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act not only extends PQRI through 2014, but, starting in 2015, it also institutes payment penalties for physicians who don’t report quality measures. The incentive payment for participating in the program drops from 2 percent this year to 1 percent in 2011 and 0.5 percent from 2012 to 2014. The penalty will be 1.5 percent in 2015 and 2 percent in subsequent years.