CMS offering tools, support, results

A report from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services indicates that more providers are taking part in the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) and electronic prescribing (eRx) is rising.

Participation from 2011 to 2012 increased by 36 percent for the PQRS program, and by 22 report for the eRx Program. The report also found that PQRS participation is highest among eligible professionals who see the most Medicare patients.

In total, 2012 PQRS incentive payments totaled about $168 million and eRx incentive payments totaled about $335 million, CMS reported.

Meanwhile, a new HL7 Immunization User Group will offer members access to industry experts and peers for help with resolving challenges related to implementing HL7 immunization standards.

HL7 International and the American Immunization Registry Association jointly announced the new user group. Members can seek assistance at monthly meetings to avoid problems that might otherwise impede progress on immunization-related healthcare interoperability projects. 

And, updated specifications for the eligible hospital 2014 clinical quality measures finalized in Meaningful Use Stage 2 of the EHR incentive program are now available on the CMS website. 

The agency also launched a new tool called Bonnie that supports measure developers in an e-specification of clinical quality measures. It will allow developers to independently load quality measure definitions from the Measure Authoring Tool, convert measure definitions into a format allowing execution of the measure logic and rapidly craft synthetic test patients.

Hopefully, these developments are proving CMS' pledge to simplify expectations and requirements to be the case for providers.

Beth Walsh

Clinical Innovation + Technology editor