It is that time again. Some of you reported that you were going to use your EMR for quality. Some of you need more money, some of you have no idea what you are doing with your business. But you know that you aren’t paid enough for what you do.
So what is this PQRS stuff? According to Medicare, PQRS is “The Physician Quality Reporting System”. “The program provides an incentive payment to practices with eligible professionals (identified on claims by their individual National Provider Identifier [NPI] and Tax Identification Number [TIN]) who satisfactorily report data on quality measures for covered Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) services furnished to Medicare Part B Fee-for-Service (FFS) beneficiaries (including Railroad Retirement Board and Medicare Secondary Payer).”
Wow, that sounds tough! What additional hoops does a doctor have to do to jump through those hoops and isnt it too late to get that money for 2012? Well GOOD NEWS! The hoops arent that small and no it is not too late to get the money.
If you havent been reporting all year long, all is not lost. You can get our money by heading over to one of the approved registries, selecting your quality measures and reporting them, or you could hire someone to submit them for you. If your office manager is swamped, you might want to hire someone. But, before you run out and hire a high school student to do it for you, you might want to shorten the task through some creative reporting.
For example, if you want to shorten the reporting on a measure like counseling for smoking cessation, you might run the report on all your patients to elminate the smokers. That way you could simply report that you didnt counsel on smoking . . . why not? Because they were non-smokers. What else? There are lots of little tricks to shorten the process, so you might want to talk with a professional or your colleagues who have completed the reports successfully. Failing to submit, in future years will result in a penalty. If you submit this year, you will get a .5% incentive. Not much if you are only bringing in $100K in medicare receipts, but still worth the time if you could find someone to do the work for you for $300.
Good Luck!