CMS offers financial incentives for quality program

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is trying a new way to recruit physicians to participate in a voluntary quality reporting program: a bonus payment of 1.5% of the total allowed charges for covered Medicare physician fee-scheduled services.

Physicians eligible to participate in the 2007 Physician Quality Reporting Initiative will choose from 74 specifications applicable to their practices to voluntarily report between July 1 and Dec. 31. To get the bonus (which is subject to a cap), physicians must report on three measures for 80% of the patients to whom these measures apply. So for instance, if a doctor reports on three of the diabetes measures-blood pres-sure, hemoglobin A1c, and low-density lipoprotein controls-for 80% of his diabetic patients during the 6-month period, he or she will receive the bonus for all of the patients treated, regardless of whether they are diabetic or not.