The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) is rolling out a new qualified clinical data registry (QCDR) for use with the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) for the 2015 reporting year. In addition to helping physicians meet the requirements of PQRS and the quality reporting for the Value-Based Payment Modifier, the Clinical Emergency Data Registry (CEDR) also will serve as a national registry for emergency physicians to help pinpoint practice patterns, trends, and outcomes in their emergency departments as compared to other groups around the country.
The CEDR will be implemented throughout 2015. The initial testing and QCDR approval phase began in April 2015 with five participating ED groups. The pilot phase began this month, with full implementation expected by the end of 2015 in time for groups to submit 2015 PQRS data.
According to an article on ACEP’s website, the CEDR will assist participating EDs as well as the healthcare industry as a whole in the following ways: “The use of de-identified aggregated data generated by CEDR will support national comparative benchmarks, evidence-based shared decision making, and guideline-informed physician practices. It will provide participating emergency clinicians with feedback regarding their individual- and/or ED-level performance on a range of process and outcome quality measures, benchmarked against their peers at national and regional levels. For government policy makers, CEDR will provide further understanding around clinical effectiveness, patient safety, care coordination, patient experience, efficiency, and system effectiveness.”
As with other QCDRs, the CEDR will offer a combination of PQRS measures and non-PQRS ED-specific measures developed by ACEP and approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as part of the QCDR. A total of eighteen non-PQRS measures were approved for the CEDR for 2015 (up to thirty non PQRS measures are allowed under federal policy). Nine PQRS measures are included for 2015 in the CEDR.
Providers who elect the QCDR option do not need to report a cross-cutting measure and must submit as individuals (there is no QCDR GRPO option). As well, the CEDR will collect data on patients from all payers, not just Medicare, so the tabulated results will have broader implications.
Participating providers will submit data through their revenue cycle management (RCM) system and/or electronic health record (EHR) database via software known as the Registry Practice Connector which runs as a Windows service. In situations where RPC installation is not possible, the registry can accept properly formatted data files transferred via secure file transport protocol (SFTP).
The cost to participate is $295 per provider. ACEP is offering a 100 percent subsidy to the first 1,000 clinicians who sign participation agreements with CEDR and a $195 subsidy to the next 1,000 clinicians who sign participation agreements. The ACEP Board has indicated that they are developing additional subsidy and incentive opportunities, as well.
For more information about the CEDR or how to become a participating provider, visit the CEDR Page on the ACEP website or email cedr@acep.org.
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