DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Centers for ...

CMS-1503-FC 1464
discussed in section VII.F.1 of this final rule with comment period, group practices
interested in participating in the CY 2011 Physician Quality Reporting System through
the group practice reporting option (GPRO) I or GPRO II may also incur a cost.
However, for groups that satisfactorily report for 2011 Physician Quality Reporting
System, we believe these costs would be completely offset by the incentive payment
earned since the group practice would be eligible for an incentive payment equal to 1
percent of the entire group's total estimated Medicare Part B PFS allowed charges for
covered professional services furnished during the reporting period.
One factor in the cost to group practices would be the costs associated with the
self-nomination process. Similar to our estimates for staff involved with the
claims-based reporting option for individual eligible professionals, we also estimate that
the group practice staff involved in the group practice self-nomination process has an
average labor cost of $58 per hour. Therefore, assuming 2 hours for a group practice to
decide whether to participate individually or as a group and 4 hours for the
self-nomination process, we estimate the total cost to a group practice associated with the
group practice self-nomination process to be approximately $348 ($58 per hour x 6 hours
per group practice).
For groups participating under the GPRO I process, another factor in the cost to
the group would be the time and effort associated with the group practice completing and
submitting the proposed data collection tool. The information collection components of
this data collection tool have been reviewed by OMB and are currently approved under
OMB control number 0938-0941, with an expiration date of December 31, 2011. Based
on the Physician Group Practice (PGP) demonstration's estimate that it takes