The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced last week that quality measures will be added to its Physician Compare website, a move coming just days before Monday’s scheduled town hall meeting to get public input on the website.
Five quality measures related to treating patients with diabetes and heart disease now will be included in search results for patients who are looking for Medicare-enrolled physicians. Ratings for physicians and other health care professionals who participate in the Medicare program will be displayed using stars alongside the actual percentage score. In the first year of reporting this information, ratings will be listed for 66 group practices and 141 accountable care organizations.
The site already includes information about the specialties of doctors and group practices, as well as board certifications and hospital affiliations.
“The AMA continues to hear from physicians about inaccuracies in the website’s search function and underlying demographics data, and these issues should be corrected before the agency adds any additional performance information,” AMA President Ardis Dee Hoven, MD, said in a statement.
At the town hall meeting, the AMA commented that the expansion of the website is a small step in the right direction, but consumers need to be informed about the greater context of the information since only a subset of large group practices were eligible to participate in the program.
The AMA cautioned CMS that additional information should only be added after data accuracy is improved and the methodology for calculations is verified and tested. The use of star rankings also was raised as a concern, which may result in inappropriate distinctions of quality for physicians whose performance scores are not statistically different.
CMS has stated it can take up to four months to correct a physician’s profile information on the website, raising concerns about how reliable the information can be when patients are using it as a tool to make medical care decisions.
