The national health care agenda is increasingly focused on improving the quality and safety of care provided to patients. Performance measures help to evaluate quality and cost-of-care performance while Pay for Performance links reimbursement to quality indicators.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Physician Quality Reporting System uses incentive payments and payment adjustments to encourage physicians to submit quality information to CMS based on payments for covered Physician Fee Schedule services furnished to Medicare Part B Fee-for-Service beneficiaries.
The Affordable Care Act requires the establishment of a physician value-based payment modifier that provides for a differential payment to a physician or group of physicians under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. Both cost and quality data are to be included in calculating payments for physicians.
The Hospital Inpatient and the Hospital Outpatient Quality Reporting Programs of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services provide financial incentives to hospitals that provide higher levels of quality care to patients.
There are various ACR tools and products that will enable radiology practices to assess, monitor and improve quality such as the following: