PROFESSIONPanel sets primary care standards for Medicare pay-for-performanceThe new quality measures could make it easier for physicians to report performance to multiple health plans.By Kevin B. O'Reilly, amednews staff. Sept. 5, 2005. The group charged by Congress with endorsing the performance measures upon which Medicare payments will be based recently adopted 36 quality standards for physician-focused outpatient care of conditions such as asthma, hypertension, heart failure and depression. The Washington, D.C.-based National Quality Forum drew two-thirds of those measures from the AMA's Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement. The other 12 measures were drawn from the National Committee for Quality Assurance, an employer- and pharmaceutical company-supported group known for rating health insurance plans. Both of the pay-for-performance bills circulating in Congress task NQF, a collection of 200 stakeholder groups including the AMA, with endorsing the quality measures Medicare will use in determining physicians' pay. "It's a major advancement that NQF has endorsed consortium measures," said Nancy H. Nielsen, MD, PhD, speaker of the AMA House of Delegates. "These are measures decided by the profession as the ones that matter. They measure what matters in terms of outcomes for patients." Although the AMA and other physician groups don't have much objection to the NQF-endorsed standards, they still are unhappy with legislation in Congress that would penalize doctors for failing to report quality data and reward top-performing doctors by taking from the existing pool of funds rather than adding to the pot. While private-sector programs such as the NCQA's Bridges to Excellence and California's Integrated Healthcare Assn. provide financial incentives to physician practices to help them offset the burden of adopting costly electronic health record systems, the bills circulating in Congress place that burden squarely on doctors' shoulders. [...]Full text of American Medical News content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2005 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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