The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (Services CMS) have announced payment of more than $36 million in bonus payments to many of the more than 56,700 health professionals who satisfactorily reported quality information to Medicare under the 2007 Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI).

"Creating a value-based purchasing system is a critical way to improve our health care systems. By collecting quality data, health care providers can use the information to improve the quality care of beneficiaries," said Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt.

Physicians, physician group practices, and other PQRI eligible professionals should receive their payments by August 2008. The average incentive amount for individual professionals is over $600 and average incentive payment for a physician group practice is over $4,700, with the largest payment to a physician group practice totaling over $205,700.
"These payments to physicians for participating in the PQRI are a first step toward improving how Medicare pays for health care services," said CMS Acting Administrator Kerry Weems. "We all can agree that the current payment system needs to be reformed to pay for high quality care rather than continuing to pay for the volume of services. The PQRI has proven to be a successful step towards establishing a value-based purchasing program for physicians."

The PQRI is a voluntary program and, in accordance with a law passed by Congress late in 2006, physicians and other eligible professionals are able to receive bonus payments of 1.5 percent of their total allowed Medicare charges, subject to a cap, by satisfactorily submitting quality information for services they furnish between July and December of 2007. More than 109,000 professionals participated in the 2007. Of those, over 56,700 physicians and other eligible professionals met statutory requirements for satisfactory reporting for the 2007 reporting period and are receiving incentive payments. The 2007 reporting period received participation in all 50 states, including D.C., Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands and Guam. Of all the participating states and territories, health professionals in Florida and Illinois are receiving the highest incentive payments for the 2007 reporting period. In Florida, they will receive a total of over $3 million and Illinois a total of over $2 million.

While the 2007 PQRI was a positive step towards reporting quality information, the 2008 PQRI program included significant enhancements in terms of the scope of measures that could be reported, the opportunity to receive incentive payments for the entire year, ability to report measures within a group for a specified number of patients, and the use of registries to report quality measures.

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