Physician Quality Incentive Payments On the Rise

In 2009, a number of measures showed improvements from their 2007 rates:

• The percent of professionals who reported that they communicated with patients with diabetes about potentially damaging eye-related complications of the disease jumped to 93% in 2009 from 52% in 2007.
• The percent of professionals who reported that patients with left-ventricular systolic dysfunction (a specific form of heart failure) received recommended beta-blocker drugs increased to 95% in 2009 from 64% in 2007.
• The percent of professionals who reported that care teams effectively stopped post-surgical antibiotics (to prevent overmedication and the formation of potentially drug-resistant “superbugs”) increased to 95% in 2009 from 54% in 2007.

Although participation is optional for now, providers who are eligible to participate in the e-prescribing program but choose not to will have their Medicare payments reduced beginning in 2012; the same rules will apply to the physician quality program beginning in 2015.