CMS Recruits Qualified Clinical Data Registries

Physicians who plan to use a clinical data registry to submit data for CMS' 2008 Physician Quality Reporting Initiative, or PQRI, need to act quickly to ensure that their registry meets CMS criteria and is deemed a qualified and established registry.

CMS is accepting self-nomination letters from registries -- including those registries currently participating in its 2008 testing process -- until 5 p.m. on May 31.

Registries that are approved by CMS will have met a list of criteria, including a Jan. 1, 2008, or earlier startup date. In addition, selected registries will be able to, among other things,

Registries must agree to provide CMS access to review the Medicare beneficiary data on which 2008 PQRI registry-based submissions are founded. They also will submit a statement attesting that the quality measure results and numerator and denominator data provided to CMS are accurate and complete.

Consult the CMS Web site for additional details (4-page PDF; About PDFs) about CMS’ selection criteria and where to submit a registry nomination letter.

Registries will be required to successfully submit a test file in XML format to CMS' data warehouse by Aug. 1; CMS will post the names of qualifying registries on its Web site on Aug. 31.

CMS announced in April that it was making new reporting options available to eligible professionals -- including reporting via clinical registries -- for the remainder of the 2008 PQRI reporting period.