Four Seasons Hospice has taken the plunge and begun to participate in the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) of Medicare. Since fall 2010, we have successfully been submitting data on three PQRI measures: #47 (Advance Care Plan), #154 (Falls risk assessment), and #155 (Falls plan of care). Our palliative care program extends across the inpatient and outpatient setting and services are delivered by nine midlevel providers and four physicians. We incorporated these PQRI metrics into our database collection tool, and educated our providers on the importance of accurately documenting these metrics. It was equally important to train our administrative and billing department on proper ways to track and code these metrics. Our hope is that future measures will be specific to our field and will eventually serve the purpose of the PQRI program, which is to ultimately improve quality care to our patients. In the meantime, we are gaining experience with the program so that we will be ready when participation becomes mandatory.
We have prepared a brief guide to the PQRI process to help other hospices who are considering participating in PQRI.
We are very interested in hearing about the experience of any other hospice or palliative care program that is participating in PQRI. Please leave a comment on the blog and let us know who you are. Let’s trade experiences and support each other.