CMS Physician Compare Web Site Offers Consumers New Provider Info Source


The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) added a new “Physician Compare” feature to the CMS Healthcare Provider Directory on December 30, 2010.  Regulators hope the new feature will help Medicare and non-Medicare patients and their families find and assess the quality of providers.  While these and other similar resources can provide valuable information for patients and their families, like all provider directories, patients and their families should be cautioned to properly understand the benefits and limitations of the resource.

Required by the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (“Affordable Care Act”), the Physician Compare tool located here has information about Doctors of Medicine, Osteopathy, Optometry, Podiatric Medicine, and Chiropractic and certain other types of health care professionals participating in the Medicare Program, who routinely care for Medicare beneficiaries.

According to CMS, the Physician Compare Web Site is designed to be consumer friendly and help all patients—whether on Medicare or not—locate health professionals in their communities. The information on the site includes contact and address information for offices, the professional’s medical specialty, where the professional completed his or her degree as well as residency or other clinical training, whether the professional speaks a foreign language, and the professional’s gender.  The tool can also help Medicare beneficiaries find out which physicians that see Medicare patients.

In addition to information about the physician’s practice, Physician Compare also shows consumers whether the practice reported certain data to CMS through the Physician Quality Reporting System, formerly known as the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI). Currently, the PQRI reporting system is a voluntary reporting program that rewards physicians and other eligible healthcare professionals for reporting data on quality measures related to services furnished to Medicare beneficiaries.  These quality measures are based on the best available medical evidence and designed to help professionals improve care for patients. In 2009, over 200,000 professionals reported data to CMS through the Physician Quality Reporting System.

According to CMS, it plans a second phase of the Web site which will indicate whether professionals chose to participate in a voluntary effort with the Agency to encourage doctors to prescribe medicines electronically, rather than through traditional paper-based prescription methods later in 2011.

In future years, the Physician Compare Web site will be expanded with information about the quality of care Medicare beneficiaries receive from physicians and the other healthcare professionals profiled on the site.  The expansion will include information on quality of care and patient experience that can help consumers learn more about the care provided by Medicare-participating physicians.  CMS is required by the Affordable Care Act to develop a plan to implement this expansion by 2013.

The new Physician Compare resource supplements a broad range of resources that patients and their families can use to gather information about an existing or proposed health care provider.  Like all directories, however, patients and their families should keep in mind that no single resource or directory provides complete information about any one provider or should be used as a sole basis for selecting or assessing the quality or credentials of any health care provider.

For More Information Or Assistance

Learn more about other useful patient empowerment information and share your own insights to help other patients and their families develop real meaningful improvements by joining Project COPE: Coalition for Patient Empowerment here by sharing ideas, tools and other solutions and other resources.

If you need help empowering your workforce or their families with new health care coping skills, updating your health benefit programs and contracts or with other employee benefit, compensation or employment regulations or other related matters please contact Cynthia Marcotte Stamer here or (469) 767-8872. 

Management attorney and consultant, Ms. Stamer is nationally and internationally recognized for work experience, advocacy and leadership on health benefit and related matters.  A practicing attorney, Ms. Stamer has more than 23 years experience advising and representing employers, employee benefit plans, their sponsors, fiduciaries, plan administrators, service providers, consultants, vendors, outsourcers, insurers, financial services providers, governments and others about health and other employee benefit, compensation, employment, insurance and financial services, and a wide range of other performance, legal and operational risk management practices and concerns.  Board Certified in Labor and Employment Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, Chair of the American Bar Association (ABA) RPTE Employee Benefit & Other Compensation Group, a Council Member of the ABA Joint Committee on Employee Benefits, and Past Chair of the ABA Health Law Section Managed Care & Insurance Interest Group, Ms. Stamer is nationally recognized for her work helping clients to design, document, administer and defend health and other employee benefit plans and other related financial and insurance products and to manage risks associated with the offering and administration of these arrangements.  Her experience includes extensive work advising and representing employers, plans, plan fiduciaries, trustees, investors, and others about managing and resolving risks relating to fiduciary, contracting and other risks and responsibilities involved in the design, selection and administration of investments for employee benefit plans, and other fiduciary responsibility matters.  She also has extensive experience assisting these and other clients to investigate and determine the appropriateness of retirement plan investment selections to comply with ERISA and other fiduciary responsibility rules, as well as to defend challenges to investment offerings or decisions against complaints or actions brought by private plaintiffs, the Labor Department, state and federal securities regulators, insurers and others.  A prolific author and popular speaker, Ms. Stamer also publishes, conducts client and other training, speaks and consults extensively on employee benefit, compensation and human resources practices and concerns for the ABA, World At Work, SHRM, American Health Lawyers Association, Institute of Internal Auditors, Society for Professional Benefits Administrators, HCCA, Southwest Benefits Association and many other organizations.  Her insights on these and related topics have appeared in Atlantic Information Service, Bureau of National Affairs, World At Work, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insurance, Managed Healthcare, Health Leaders, various ABA publications and a many other national and local publications. To learn more about Ms. Stamer, her experience, involvements, programs and publications, see here or contact Ms. Stamer.

Other Resources & Developments

If you found this information of interest, you also may be interested in reviewing other recent updates by Ms. Stamer about the tax credit on Code §45R or other benefits, compensation or human resources matters including:

If you or someone else you know would like to receive future updates and notices about upcoming programs and events, please be sure that we have your current contact information – including your preferred e-mail- by creating or updating your profile at here.  For important information about this communication click here.

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©2010 Cynthia Marcotte Stamer. Limited non-exclusive license to republish granted to Solutions Law Press.  All other rights reserved.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 4th, 2011 at 1:56 PM and is filed under ERISA, Health Plans, Human Resources, Patient Empowerment, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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