FEDERAL | ASPS Advocates for Appropriate Quality Metrics
In response to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) annual call for quality measures and activities, ASPS reiterated its desire to work with the Agency to address the lack of appropriate quality metrics for plastic surgeons participating in the Medicare Quality Payment Program (QPP).
In its most recent comments, ASPS requested that CMS delete four irrelevant and ill-fitting measures from the Plastic Surgery Measure Set and recognize a surgical outcome measure as valuable for quality reporting by plastic surgeons. CMS annually calls for organizations to identify and submit new specialty measure sets, as well as recommended revisions to current measures included in the QPP's Alternative Payment Models and Merit-Based Incentive Payment (MIPS) programs.
CMS has collaborated with specialty societies since 2015 to develop specialty measure sets with the goal of assisting specialty physicians in choosing quality measures applicable to their practice. During the 2017 rule-making process, CMS acknowledged the need for a plastic surgery measure set, and crafted a list of eleven measures it believed would be appropriate for reporting by plastic surgeons. While ASPS was especially pleased to see a specialty-specific measure set for its members included in the QPP; it was disappointed to learn, however, that CMS had included measures of care not typically provided and reported on by plastic surgeons.
This recent communication is one of many advocacy efforts ASPS has undertaken to ensure CMS re-evaluates each measure assigned to the Plastic Surgery Measure Set to ensure their relevance to the specialty. The current Plastic Surgery Measure Set can be found on the Society's website dedicated to the QPP, and updated 2018 measures will be published no later than November 1, 2017.