Alteon Health, a physician-owned and physician-led acute care medical group based in Germantown, MD, recently became a Qualified Clinical Data Registry (QCDR), a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)-approved vendor that is in the business of improving healthcare quality. QCDRs may include specialty societies, regional health collaboratives, large health systems, or software vendors working in collaboration with one of these medical entities.1
“One of the ways QCDRs can help to improve the quality of care patients receive is by collecting clinical data from clinicians and reporting this data to CMS on their behalf for purposes of MIPS [Merit-based Incentive Payment System]. QCDR submission differs from qualified registry submission in that QCDRs can submit non-MIPS measures, called QCDR measures, as well as MIPS quality measures,” CMS says.1
The QCDR status allows the medical group to develop unique performance measures with more granularity and more significance to the profession than traditional MIPS measures, says Marvin Gallo, Sr., program manager of value-based programs with Alteon Health, which specializes in emergency medicine. The practice was assisted by Healthmonix in Malvern, PA, which provides value-based care analytics and other services.
The project began in 2018, with the practice looking for quality metrics that would be more useful for improving care.
“One of the things that stood out for me was the fact that quality metrics that are specific to emergency are really topped out and may not be as relevant anymore. They have not been updated in a long time,” Gallo says. “If we really wanted to succeed, there were only a couple things we could do. The one we decided on in early 2020 was to become our own Qualified Clinical Data Registry.”
