It's true that a number of specialty groups don't feel comfortable that they can meet these time lines, Dr. David Nielsen, executive vice president and chief executive officer of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, said in an interview.
There's an assumption that the AMA is going to be responsible for doing all of the specialty measures, Dr. David Nielsen said. "While those concerns are valid, it isn't going to come to that." What these groups need to remember is [that the] AMA's consortium is run by the specialty societies, a process that's consensus based, he said. (The American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery is a consortium member.)
"People who are upset about this aren't comparing it to what would happen if the AMA didn't step in; that CMS would step in and do their own measures. I'd be much happier with consortium measures than any other group of measures, because the consortium is in the best position to produce patient-centered measures of medical outcomes that are driven by physicians, and are relevant and validated," he said.
Physician concerns about CMS's initial draft of the physician voluntary reporting program (PVRP) had also been interpreted on Capitol Hill as a sign of opposition to quality reporting, Dr. Maves noted.
From CMS's perspective, there's no reason why the AMA's agreement shouldn't work in tandem with the PVRP, CMS spokesman Peter Ashkenaz said in an interview.
The voluntary reporting program isn't about developing measures, it's about testing systems "on how well we can use the existing claims-based system to capture the data from the measures," he said.