Anesthesia Business Consultants President and CEO Tony Mira penned a column for his newsletter on the recently developed American Society of Anesthesiologists Qualified Clinical Data Registries Roundtable.
Here's what you should know:
1. ASA formed the QCDR Roundtable to discuss Merit-based Incentive Payment System measure development and implementation. The organization hopes to develop measures that'll relate specifically to anesthesia practices.
2. Mr. Mira wrote that QCDRs offer one method for anesthesia providers to report MIPS quality data. Mr. Mira believes that method is the most prudent and reliable.
3. It's ASA's goal to have the roundtable establish a consensus on quality measures to reduce variability between measures.
Considering cardiac arrest, Mr. Mira said the measure should reflect the same care dimensions and clearly indicate what they're measuring. He believes the measure should align the anesthesia specialty with CMS' goals around quality measure harmonization.
4. The current issue with QCDR measures is that they are open for interpretation, which creates confusion.
Returning to cardiac arrest, "If several QCDRs include measures of the incidence of cardiac arrest, for example, should those measures exclude emergent cases that come through the emergency department? Isn’t the risk of cardiac arrest in this group much higher than that for patients who come in for a screening colonoscopy? Or, should the measure cover all causes of cardiac arrest?" Mr. Mira said.
To avoid this confusion, Mr. Mira believes the measures need distinct names that reflect their intent.
5. At the roundtable's September meeting, the group agreed harmonization of measures should be planned and implemented through a timeline. Harmonization guidelines will be considered during future meetings. Mr. Mira said the harmonization will not go into effect until 2019 because of time constraints.
6. The roundtable also agreed on four key principles related to the measures:
- Stability
- Timeliness
- Accommodation
- Proactive approach
7. Mr. Mira suggested anesthesia practices ask vendors four potential questions when choosing a QCDR for MIPS data. They are:
- What is your strategy for continuing to meet our needs as CMS and MIPS requirements continue to evolve?
- How much is your strategy going to cost me?
- How involved have you been with the industry to help shape our future with MIPS?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of harmonization with QCDRs?
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