The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has approved the Spine IQ Low Back Pain Registry as a qualified clinical data registry for the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) in 2016.
The registry includes 21 performance measures: 17 existing PQRS measures and four new measures: patient satisfaction, change in pain intensity, change in pain interference and repeat X-ray imaging. The Spine IQ website (www.spineiq.org) explains the significance of the low back pain registry and its value to DCs, the chiropractic profession and the patients you serve:
"Clinical data registries are computer-based networks that collect data from clinicians in order to describe the natural history of disease, determine the clinical effectiveness, cost-effectiveness of health care services, and to measure/monitor safety and quality. Registries are increasingly used by health care professions to establish the value of the care they provide and will become even more important as the world moves towards performance-based payment systems."
What Are the Benefits of Joining a Clinical Registry?
- "Tracking outcomes such as change in pain intensity and pain interference across your entire patient population;
- Improving patient follow-up by using data to identify patients who are not meeting performance benchmarks;
- Demonstrating the value of your practice to patients, payers and other stakeholders by benchmarking yourself on more than 20 performance measures;
- Meeting Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regulatory requirements for Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) and Meaningful Use programs;
- Contributing real patient data towards research efforts that can answer important questions about spine care best practices."
The stated goals of Spine IQ are "to increase the patient-centered value of spine care by leveraging the primary spine practitioner (PSP) model, quality benchmarking, PSP education, and spine care research through the use of clinical data registries." The website includes information on all of the above goals and how doctors of chiropractic can participate.
"We believe that there is a tremendous opportunity to increase the quality and value of spine care through the use of a primary spine care practitioner model, said Anthony Hamm, DC, FACO, Spine IQ chief clinical officer and board chairman.
To learn more about qualified clinical data registries, a reporting mechanism introduced for the PQRS in 2014, visit www.cms.gov. To learn more about the Physician Quality Reporting System, read "Not Using the PQRS?" by Susan McClelland in the Oct. 15, 2013 issue of DC.
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