News: QPP releases 2017 Physician Compare data; clinician participation rates, success increase

The 2017 Quality Payment Program (QPP) performance information is now available on CMS’ Physician Compare website, according to a post on the CMS Blog. This data serves to “help patients find and compare Medicare clinicians in order to make informed healthcare decisions,” according to CMS Administrator Seema Verma. 

A subset of 2017 QPP data has been added to the Physician Compare site, including:

• 12 Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) quality measures reported by groups and displayed as measure-level star ratings on group profiles
• Eight Consumer Assessment for Healthcare Provider and Systems (CAHPS) for MIPS summary survey measures displayed as percent performance scores on group profiles
• Six Qualified Clinical Data Registry (QCDR) quality measures reported by groups and displayed as percent performance scores on group program pages
• 11 QCDR quality measures reported by individual clinicians and displayed as percent performance scores on individual clinician profile pages

Additionally, CMS announced that clinical participation and success under the QPP’s two tracks—Advanced Alternative Payment Models (APMs) and MIPS—has increased from 2017 to 2018.

Specifically, year-over-year, the number of qualified providers participating in Advanced APMs nearly doubled from 2017 to 2018, from 99,076 to 183,306 clinicians. The number of qualified providers participating in MIPS through APMs also increased from 341,220 participants in 2017 to 356,828 in 2018, according to the CMS Blog.

Clinicians participating in MIPS also fared better than in years past with 97% exceeding the performance threshold score to receive a positive payment adjustment in 2018. In 2017, 93% exceeded the performance threshold score. Though the scores improved across the performance categories, the largest gains were in the quality performance category.

“These successes are a testament to the combined efforts of clinicians, stakeholders, our no-cost technical assistance organizations, and CMS to make MIPS better,” wrote Verma. “While we are proud of program successes, our goal has always been to develop a meaningful [QPP] for every clinician, regardless of practice size or specialty, and we recognize that additional long-term improvements are needed.”  

Editor’s note: To read the full CMS Blog post, click here. For more information about Physician Compare and publicly reported quality data, click here.