Preview your Physician Compare data now – before everyone else does

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) later this year will post physician quality data from 2014 on its Physician Compare website(www.medicare.gov). The data is a subset of the 2014 Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) measures.

Beginning this week, physicians have 30 days – until Nov. 6 – to preview their data before it is published. The public reporting of the data won’t directly affect your Medicare payments. But some Medicare consumers may use the data to choose, keep, or change their physician, which could affect your bottom line.

You can access the secured measures preview site through the Provider Quality Information Portal. To learn more about which measures will be publicly reported(www.cms.gov) and how to preview your measures(www.cms.gov), visit the Physician Compare Initiative page(www.cms.gov) on the CMS web site.

If you have any questions about Physician Compare, public reporting, or the 2014 quality measure preview period, please contact CMS through its contractor at PhysicianCompare@Westat.com.

– Kent Moore, Senior Strategist for Physician Payment for the American Academy of Family Physicians