Could CMS be knocking at the physician's door next year? I am guessing here efficiency would mean in the direction of using technology to become more efficient as that is pretty much the foremost solution. In just my observations as a consultant a visual at any practice pretty much tells the story on how much technology might be in use. The offices still buried in total paper tend to display a much busier staff with faxing, files, etc. while those with some degree of technology in use seem to show a much calmer and organized office, less chaos and little or no paper chasing going on, allowing for more concentration on patient care. BD
CMS has the data and computer capacity to identify physicians who are inefficient compared with their colleagues and as early as mid-2008 might begin to contact those physicians and ask them to become more efficient, Herbert Kuhn, acting deputy administrator of the agency testified on Thursday at a House subcommittee hearing, CQ HealthBeat reports. At a House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health hearing, Kuhn said that identification of inefficient physicians, or "profiling," would involve a comparison of the number of tests ordered by physicians for certain types of patients with the number ordered by colleagues in cases that have the same outcome.
Kuhn said that the largest concern about implementation of profiling involves the determination of how to use the results to educate physicians to become more efficient and whether to involve medical societies, Medicare quality improvement organizations or other groups in the process. He added that he expects CMS to implement profiling on a "broad scale" and target as many physicians as possible, "if not all physicians." In addition, Kuhn said that CMS could implement profiling without the passage of legislation.
Source: CMS Seeks To Begin 'Profiling' Inefficient Physicians
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