ATI Physical Therapy (ATI) has exceeded the exceptional performance threshold (EPT) of 75 points for all its 950 clinics in the 2019 CMS Quality Payment Program (QPP), it shares in a news release.
The QPP program is part of the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), which ATI voluntarily entered in order to support the development of national benchmarks for physical therapy services.
ATI partnered with OrthoQCDR to develop and report on several outcome-based performance measures accepted by the CMS QPP, but mainly relied on its own proprietary electronic medical record (EMR) and Patient Outcomes Registry across all patients – not selective to Medicare – to share the patient outcomes reporting that helped it exceed the benchmarks of the program.
Less than 8% of quality measures generally available for 2019 used patient-reported outcomes; 92% were fee-for-service measures. The CMS QPP is designed to tie healthcare payments to quality, drive improvement in care processes and health outcomes, increase the use of healthcare information and reduce the cost of healthcare.
The EPT score for physical therapy is based on quality measures like fall risk and functional improvement, weighted at 85%, and clinical practice improvement, weighted by 15%. ATI’s scores ranged from 79 to 100, on a scale of 1 to 100, with the average being 75, defined as an “exceptional performer.” The designation as exceptional performer by CMS allows ATI to earn a bonus on every CMS Medicare Part B payment collected in 2021; a minimum score of 75 for 2019 was required to qualify.
“ATI remains steadfastly focused on delivering excellent quality of care to our patients, partners and payers through our novel data and outcomes collection and reporting. It informs a higher level of clinical care and service in our clinics by producing benchmarks for treatment and rehab programs. We’re honored to be part of the QPP and MIPS programs by developing a national benchmark for healthcare excellence and reimbursement, as well as for the physical therapy industry.”
— Joseph Zavalishin, ATI’s Chief Development Officer
ATI’s fully HIPAA-compliant Patient Outcomes Registry leverages past patient outcomes to improve future treatments through the sharing of data and intelligence, as well as through collaboration with other scientists, research institutions and physicians. The Registry has been registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, listed in the Registry of Patient Registries, and has been vetted by the US National Institutes of Health and the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Health Care Research and Quality.
Through MIPS, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is required by law to implement a quality payment incentive program, referred to as the Quality Payment Program (QPP), which rewards value and outcomes in one of two ways: Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and Advanced Alternative Payment Models (APMs).
The CMS MIPS reporting for 2019 focused only on quality reporting and clinical practice improvement activities for physical therapy, eliminating interpretability and cost. MIPS participation is required beginning in 2020 for all eligible physical therapy providers.
[Source: ATI Physical Therapy, GlobeNewswire]
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