CMS has announced a series of changes designed to encourage physician participation in the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI). Under the PQRI, eligible professionals who satisfactorily report data on specified quality measures for covered professional services can receive an incentive payment equal to 1.5 percent of their total allowed charges for covered services during the reporting period (subject to a cap). For 2008, in addition to submitting PQRI data through Medicare claims submissions, CMS will allow eligible professionals to report data to a medical registry, and these registries will then report that data to CMS. Professionals can choose to report data on either individual measures or on groups of related measures.
