A new survey published in Health Affairs examines the increasing cost physicians take on for quality reporting, according to a Medscape article. Physicians Foundation was the main funder in the research.
Physicians often report on hundreds of quality measures, sometimes with little overlap between the measures required by different payers. The study examined 1,000 randomly-selected practices from MGMA's membership for a web-based survey. There were 240 practices from orthopedics, cardiology, primary care and multispecialty with an overall response rate of 39.4 percent.
The researchers found:
1. The practice physicians and staff spend around 15 hours per week per physician on quality measures, with physicians spending 2.6 hours per week on quality measures. Licensed practical nurses or medical assistants spent the most time on quality reporting.
2. Most of the time spent on quality reporting was spent on data entry strictly for the quality measures.
3. The primary care physicians spent the most time on quality measures per week — nearly four hours per week — compared with multispecialty practice physicians at three hours per week and cardiologists at 1.7 hours per week. Orthopedists spent just over one hour per week on quality measures.
4. The estimated average cost per year for physician quality reporting was $40,069 per physician per year. The study authors estimate around $15.4 billion is spent in the United States on quality measure reporting for the four practice types surveyed.
5. Most practices — 80-plus percent — said they increased efforts on quality reporting compared with three years ago.