The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has notified more than 3,000 of the nation’s hospitals that they will receive the full payment update for calendar year 2009 as part of the new Hospital Outpatient Quality Data Reporting Program.
The 3,313 successful hospitals represent 99.3 percent of the 3,339 hospitals that participated in the program. Of the remaining 26, which will receive an update reduced by two percentage points, 18 did not report required quality data successfully, while eight did not have a QualityNet Administrator.
The new reporting program began in 2008 as an effort to strengthen the tie between the quality of care furnished to people with Medicare in hospital outpatient departments and the payments hospitals receive for those services. Data culled from the hospital reporting program will help Medicare and the broader healthcare community learn more about the quality of services available to beneficiaries in outpatient care settings and how to improve that care. The program will also give CMS baseline data from which a pay-for-performance outpatient system could be created.
Read the release.
