PERSPECTIVE

Vituity QCDR: Shaping the Future of Healthcare Quality

If the words “quality reporting” conjure up spreadsheets, mindless data entry, and dusty books of administrative regulations, think again. With Vituity’s qualified clinical data registry (QCDR), we’re all about action and impact. By focusing clinicians on evidence-based practices, we’re helping to transform care across the partnership and the country.

You probably already know that our QCDR team works to maximize Medicare reimbursement for Vituity clinicians. But you might be surprised to learn that we’re also leading the development of new clinical quality measures. Some of these have become industry standards used by federal programs and industry stakeholders.

Bradford Tinloy , MD

Director of CMS Programs

Published August 16, 2024

QCDRs: The What and Why

Most hospital-based clinicians must participate in the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) to bill Medicare for their services. This requires them to report data on certain quality measures to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

CMS provides MIPS Quality measures that are reportable and accessible to all clinicians. However, finding specialty—or population-specific, relevant measures is often challenging. Furthermore, manual MIPS reporting is expensive and time-consuming, requiring hundreds of staff and physician hours each year. Vituity launched our Qualified Clinical Data Registry program in 2015 to address these issues.

A QCDR is an entity approved by CMS to compile and report quality data from multiple physicians and practice sites. Vituity was an early QCDR adopter, and our H-CPR and E-CPR registries were among the very first dedicated to hospital and emergency medicine (respectively).

The QCDR is a cost-effective way for Vituity to meet its reporting requirements. We extract the quality measures data from our revenue cycle management platform, saving considerable physician and staff time.

Physicians who perform poorly on MIPS measures risk losing up to 9 percent of their Medicare payments. By contrast, most Vituity QCDR participants avoid penalties, and many also receive positive Medicare bonuses.

Vituity QCDR

Learn more about how Vituity QCDR can support your quality improvements.

Driving Quality Through QCDRs

In addition to maximizing reimbursement, our QCDR helps to drive clinical quality at Vituity and beyond. When it comes to improving care, registries have several advantages over other common reporting mechanisms like claims-based reporting:

QCDRs report data on all patients (not just Medicare beneficiaries).
In addition to reporting on MIPS measures, QCDRs can create and report on custom measures to support clinical goals.
QCDRs can also report on measures developed by other QCDRs (for example, Vituity reports on several measures developed by the American College of Emergency Physicians QCDR).
QCDR data can be used for other quality initiatives, such as Ongoing Professional Performance Evaluations and site-level initiatives.

Impact of Custom Measures

Custom quality measures created by Vituity physicians are helping transform care nationwide. An example is our team’s work around medication-assisted treatment (MAT), also known as Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD).

Patients with OUD often seek care due to withdrawal symptoms. Studies show that initiating medication-assisted treatment with opioid agonists like buprenorphine and methadone can decrease withdrawal, craving, and long-term opioid use.

MIPS provides only one MAT/MOUD-related measure (#468 Continuity of Pharmacotherapy). To promote the wider use of MAT/MOUD, Vituity’s MAT champions approached the QCDR team about creating custom measures. Several of our developed measures were approved by CMS, including:

Percentage of patients presenting with opioid withdrawal who were given MOUD and referred to outpatient opioid treatment.
Percentage of opioid poisoning or overdose patients who were prescribed naloxone and educated about its use.

Both measures can be applied across a variety of care settings (emergency department, urgent care, hospital medicine) to encourage evidence-based practices for an undertreated and often-stigmatized condition.

Join Us in Transforming Care

Vituity is leading the way in healthcare quality, and we welcome the opportunity to support like-minded organizations that improve lives. As of 2024, Vituity has 15 approved measures used by QCDRs nationally.

Our clinical leadership has over 8 years of experience in MIPS data collection, reporting to CMS, and expertly guiding the development and support of QCDR measures. To stay at the cutting edge of healthcare practice, we participate in nationwide specialty societies, committees, and clinical improvement work groups. Our multi-specialty practice management organization, partnered with world-class physician leadership, is well-positioned to support quality innovation.

Our program supports quality improvement in all areas of acute care medicine, including:

Emergency medicine
Urgent and ambulatory care
Hospital medicine
Critical care medicine
Post-acute care

To learn more about joining our program, email registry@vituity.com.

Partnering to improve patient lives

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