The Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement is moving full-steam ahead with its goal of developing 140 quality-of-care measures by the end of 2006. According to the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Web site, “98 performance measures on 17 clinical topics are available for implementation.”
Performance measures are under development for doctors to comply with voluntarily reporting to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
By doing so starting in 2007, doctors who report on how well they’ve complied with at least three to five of these measures will receive higher compensation from Medicare, according to a joint House-Senate working agreement signed in 2005 by the AMA and several legislators, reported AMNews.
The American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) is already considering several performance measures, according to Dirk Elston, M.D., who is the Co-Chair of the AMA Skin Cancer Pay for Performance Workgroup.
Some of these measures include:
• asking patients who have a history of melanoma whether they have any new moles or moles that have changed in appearance.
• performing full-body skin exams on patients who have a history of melanoma.
• counseling patients who have a history of melanoma to perform self exams.
Concern over Pay-for-Performance
The voluntary reporting system has many doctors concerned because they see it as a step on the pathway to pay-for-performance, a compensation model that is based on measuring physician performance with the intent to better compensate higher-performing physicians and enable patients an objective means to select providers.
Pay-for-performance has raised many concerns already for physicians across the board — the most important of which is the potential for decreased reimbursement to providers who are categorized as inferior or who choose not to participate in the reporting program.
According to Dr. Elston, who is also the Director of the Department of Dermatology at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, PA, “Pay-for-performance is going to happen with or without our cooperation. We are much better off developing measures than having them dictated to us. Because of this,” Dr. Elston continues, “we are taking the lead to develop measures in cooperation with the AMA.”
If doctors don’t take the lead, Dr. Elston cautions, who knows what CMS would come up with on its own. Another concern is that if others determine the performance measures, then appropriate denominator exclusions could be overlooked.
For example, explains Dr. Elston, “You would never counsel a blind patient to conduct a self-examination. Also, patients may decline a full-body skin exam, and this should not count against the physician.”
For a list of performance measures already approved by the AMA, log on to: www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/4837.html. n
Larisa Hubbs
Executive Editor
lhubbs@hmpcommunications.com
The Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement is moving full-steam ahead with its goal of developing 140 quality-of-care measures by the end of 2006. According to the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Web site, “98 performance measures on 17 clinical topics are available for implementation.”
Performance measures are under development for doctors to comply with voluntarily reporting to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
By doing so starting in 2007, doctors who report on how well they’ve complied with at least three to five of these measures will receive higher compensation from Medicare, according to a joint House-Senate working agreement signed in 2005 by the AMA and several legislators, reported AMNews.
The American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) is already considering several performance measures, according to Dirk Elston, M.D., who is the Co-Chair of the AMA Skin Cancer Pay for Performance Workgroup.
Some of these measures include:
• asking patients who have a history of melanoma whether they have any new moles or moles that have changed in appearance.
• performing full-body skin exams on patients who have a history of melanoma.
• counseling patients who have a history of melanoma to perform self exams.
Concern over Pay-for-Performance
The voluntary reporting system has many doctors concerned because they see it as a step on the pathway to pay-for-performance, a compensation model that is based on measuring physician performance with the intent to better compensate higher-performing physicians and enable patients an objective means to select providers.
Pay-for-performance has raised many concerns already for physicians across the board — the most important of which is the potential for decreased reimbursement to providers who are categorized as inferior or who choose not to participate in the reporting program.
According to Dr. Elston, who is also the Director of the Department of Dermatology at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, PA, “Pay-for-performance is going to happen with or without our cooperation. We are much better off developing measures than having them dictated to us. Because of this,” Dr. Elston continues, “we are taking the lead to develop measures in cooperation with the AMA.”
If doctors don’t take the lead, Dr. Elston cautions, who knows what CMS would come up with on its own. Another concern is that if others determine the performance measures, then appropriate denominator exclusions could be overlooked.
For example, explains Dr. Elston, “You would never counsel a blind patient to conduct a self-examination. Also, patients may decline a full-body skin exam, and this should not count against the physician.”
For a list of performance measures already approved by the AMA, log on to: www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/4837.html. n
Larisa Hubbs
Executive Editor
lhubbs@hmpcommunications.com
The Physician Consortium for Performance Improvement is moving full-steam ahead with its goal of developing 140 quality-of-care measures by the end of 2006. According to the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Web site, “98 performance measures on 17 clinical topics are available for implementation.”
Performance measures are under development for doctors to comply with voluntarily reporting to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
By doing so starting in 2007, doctors who report on how well they’ve complied with at least three to five of these measures will receive higher compensation from Medicare, according to a joint House-Senate working agreement signed in 2005 by the AMA and several legislators, reported AMNews.
The American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) is already considering several performance measures, according to Dirk Elston, M.D., who is the Co-Chair of the AMA Skin Cancer Pay for Performance Workgroup.
Some of these measures include:
• asking patients who have a history of melanoma whether they have any new moles or moles that have changed in appearance.
• performing full-body skin exams on patients who have a history of melanoma.
• counseling patients who have a history of melanoma to perform self exams.
Concern over Pay-for-Performance
The voluntary reporting system has many doctors concerned because they see it as a step on the pathway to pay-for-performance, a compensation model that is based on measuring physician performance with the intent to better compensate higher-performing physicians and enable patients an objective means to select providers.
Pay-for-performance has raised many concerns already for physicians across the board — the most important of which is the potential for decreased reimbursement to providers who are categorized as inferior or who choose not to participate in the reporting program.
According to Dr. Elston, who is also the Director of the Department of Dermatology at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, PA, “Pay-for-performance is going to happen with or without our cooperation. We are much better off developing measures than having them dictated to us. Because of this,” Dr. Elston continues, “we are taking the lead to develop measures in cooperation with the AMA.”
If doctors don’t take the lead, Dr. Elston cautions, who knows what CMS would come up with on its own. Another concern is that if others determine the performance measures, then appropriate denominator exclusions could be overlooked.
For example, explains Dr. Elston, “You would never counsel a blind patient to conduct a self-examination. Also, patients may decline a full-body skin exam, and this should not count against the physician.”
For a list of performance measures already approved by the AMA, log on to: www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/4837.html. n
Larisa Hubbs
Executive Editor
lhubbs@hmpcommunications.com
