CMS Expands Healthcare Provider

CMS Expands Healthcare Provider Directory

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has enhanced the Physician Directory tool at www.Medicare.gov with new information about physicians and other healthcare workers in their communities and the services those professionals provide. The new feature, called Physician Compare, expands and updates CMS’s Healthcare Provider Directory, which has helped millions of beneficiaries find Medicare-participating doctors online for over a decade. The new tool expands the doctor-specific information into the suite of informational tools for Medicare beneficiaries and other consumers.

The new site, at www.Medicare.gov/find-a-doctor , which was required by the Affordable Care Act of 2010, contains information about physicians enrolled in the Medicare program, which include Doctors of Medicine, Osteopathy, Optometry, Podiatric Medicine, and Chiropractic Medicine. The site also contains information about other types of health professionals who routinely care for Medicare beneficiaries, including nurse practitioners, clinical psychologists, registered dietitians, physical therapists, physician assistants, and occupational therapists.

The Physician Compare website 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 identify which physicians participate in the Medicare program.

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, more than 200,000 professionals reported data to CMS through the Physician Quality Reporting System.

Later in 2011, CMS plans a second phase of the website 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.

To learn more about the quality information CMS already collects through Medicare’s Physician Quality Reporting System, visit http://www.cms.gov/pqri. To visit the Physician Compare website, visit www.Medicare.gov/find-a-doctor or click on the “Compare” tab at www.Healthcare.gov.