The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, through one of its quality improvement organizations, has subcontracted with four regional collaboratives in Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Wisconsin to provide Medicare beneficiaries with physician performance data. The information is intended to be used as an aid to beneficiaries in choosing physicians and to help physicians improve their quality through performance data. The Better Quality Information to Improve Care for Medicare Beneficiaries Project is part of HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt’s Value-Driven Health Care Initiative, which is based on four cornerstones announced in President Bush’s Executive Order issued August 2006 and includes transparency of healthcare quality. The quality measures to be used in the BQI project have been adopted by the AQA, and Medicare claims data will be aggregated with claims data from other payers, including employers, health insurance plans, and in some cases Medicaid programs, to produce more accurate measures of the quality of services being provided by physicians. CMS plans to announce two additional BQI subcontractors in the near future.
