Medicare pilot project offers CME for quality improvement

Physicians can earn up to 30 credits by working to enhance the quality of patient care.

By Markian Hawryluk, AMNews staff. April 28, 2003.

Washington -- Medicare has sweetened the pot for physicians to engage in quality improvement projects.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced a national pilot program to award continuing medical education credits to physicians who participate in quality improvement projects with Medicare's Quality Improvement Organizations.

To qualify for credits, physicians must implement a quality improvement intervention in one of three areas -- diabetes management, influenza and pneumococcal immunization, and breast cancer screening. Then physicians must use performance measures to track the success of their programs and adjust their interventions if no improvement occurs.

"The program provides an opportunity for physicians to build their quality improvement capacity while earning CME credit for their efforts to improve care," CMS Administrator Tom Scully said.

The pilot project aims to boost the number of physicians in outpatient and office settings participating in quality improvement efforts.

Medicare officials also want to develop quality improvement skills among primary care physicians that later could be applied to other patient populations.

QIOs can provide physicians with specific interventions and measures for use in the project, or doctors can develop their own.

Participants will earn 5.5 credits in the first quarter after implementation because of the preliminary work needed to implement the intervention, and then an additional 1.5 credits for each subsequent quarter of the project. If they implement interventions in each of the three topic areas, physicians can earn up to 30 credits in the first year.