Rheumatologist Quality Measurement Performance Varies Widely

Rheumatology practices had significant variation in quality measurement performance during 2017, according to an educational session at the 2017 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting.

During her presentation, Jinoos Yazdany, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine and rheumatology at the University of California San Francisco, discussed how rheumatologists participating in the Rheumatology Informatics System for Effectiveness (RISE) registry performed on the MIPS quality measures.  

“Under the new MACRA act, the quality of care rheumatologists provide will have financial repercussions through the MIPS,” she said. “MIPS will score providers across four domains: Quality, Clinical Practice Improvement, Advancing Care Information, and Cost.” 

In order to measure how rheumatologists performed on quality measures in the first quarter of 2017, the researchers studied quality measures from the RISE registry related to rheumatoid arthritis, drug safety, preventive care, and gout. The researchers then calculated performance by using the percentage of eligible patients receiving recommended care. Throughout the study period, the researchers examined electronic health records for 548,990 patients across 491 physicians at 109 provider practices. 

Study results showed that the performance on quality measures varied significantly across provider practices. They found that for two of the five measures rheumatologists exceed the national average.

“We found significant variation in performance on quality measures in the first quarter of 2017 across RISE practices, with some practices having already achieved a very high level of performance,” the researchers wrote.

In order to help improve awareness of quality measure performance, the researchers also developed a dashboard to display scores across four MIPS quality measure domains. 

“We anticipate that the MIPS dashboard prototype will go live on the RISE user interface in late 2017 and will aid rheumatologists in proactively monitoring their MIPS score,” the researchers concluded.

—David Costill