CMS Adds New Quality Information to the Physician Compare Website

The Physician Compare website, created by the Affordable Care Act, has been updated with new quality information as part of its planned phased approach. The changes were recently announced in a CMS Fact Sheet.

Physician Compare now publicly reports certain 2016 performance information. Data is available on public-facing profile pages or at Data.Medicare.gov and is designed primarily for patients and caregivers.

The Downloadable Database is intended to be a resource for clinicians and group representatives as well as third-party data users. The final 2016 data won’t be available for download until sometime in 2018. At this time, the most current general and performance information available for download is for 2015.

Available 2016 Performance Data        

Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) data shows performance ratings in 8 categories including:

• Preventive care – general health
• Preventive care – cancer screening
• Patient safety
• Care planning
• Diabetes
• Heart disease
• Respiratory diseases
• Behavioral health

Physician Compare Star Ratings

For the first time this year and as part of its phased approach, CMS is reporting a small subset of PQRS measures on group profile pages as star ratings.

The star rating system is in response to stakeholder requests and uses a 5-star methodology that is intuitive for patients and caregivers to interpret. The method chosen should produce more stable ratings across the years to better assess year-to-year performance.

Learn more about the star ratings at the Physician Compare Initiative page and read all about Physician Compare at this CMS website.

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