(Rockville, MD - October 2, 2008) The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) has invited audiology organizations to convene in the development of quality measures so that audiologists can participate in Medicare quality reporting initiative.
The Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 recently added audiologists as eligible providers that could receive a 2% bonus for reporting quality measures under the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative. PQRI is a voluntary quality reporting program, which includes an incentive payment for eligible professionals who report data on quality measures for services provided to Medicare beneficiaries.
The goal of the discussions is to develop and submit, by spring 2009, a consensus-based quality measures for endorsement by the National Quality Forum (NQF), AQA Alliance, or another similar process recognized by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). This past year, NQF endorsed eight Functional Communications Measures from ASHA's National Outcomes Measurement System, making them eligible for consideration by the CMS for PQRI use.
"We hope to share our knowledge and successful collaborative experience with the NQF measurement endorsement process to convene and help develop consensus-based quality measures that can be used by audiologists," Catherine Gottfred, ASHA's President says. "It's important that we have broad input from the audiology community as we move forward with other health care providers and payors to link reimbursement to quality, which is expected to evolve over time into a value-based purchasing or pay-for-performance system."
For further information, contact Sharon Beamer, AuD, ASHA's Associate Director of Audiology Professional Practices, at sbeamer@asha.org or Vic Gladstone, PhD, ASHA's Chief Staff Officer for Audiology, at vgladstone@asha.org.
About the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
ASHA is the national professional, scientific, and credentialing association for more than 130,000 audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and speech, language, and hearing scientists. Audiologists specialize in preventing and assessing hearing and dizziness disorders as well as providing audiologic treatment including hearing aids.
