During the recent baseline abstraction period, many of you reported that the abstraction made you aware of gaps in your current processes. Some of you found that you did not consistently record the information in the chart, making the abstraction take longer. Others were surprised at deficiencies and recognized opportunities for providing better care.

The first pay for quality year began July 1, 2007 and runs through June 30, 2008. Practices that start soon have time to improve on the indicators measured in order to obtain the highest possible payment.

Now is the time to consider work process redesign to increase your scoring during this first pay for performance year and make it easier to abstract the data next year. If you haven’t already had a meeting with the providers and the person who abstracted the data for you this year, we recommend this as a first step.

If you would like a representative from HealthInsight to facilitate the discussion of possible changes to maximize payment (and improve care) for your practice, please contact us.

With your permission, we can also run preliminary report from the data abstracted on 2006 to help identify areas in most need of improvement. These will not be the final reports CMS will use to calculate your score and payment, but it should indicate which care processes need the most improvement.