Is GPRO the right option for your Providers for PQRS?

We are one month away from the June 30th deadline to register your physicians to electronically report for PQRS and Meaningful Use using Group Practice Reporting Option (GPRO). At Medisolv, we’ve been answering a lot of questions about this topic. Here are the top five GPRO questions that have been submitted by  our recent webinar attendees.

What is the benefit of registering for the GPRO option?

The benefit of GPRO is that instead of every one of your providers individually reporting nine measures each for PQRS, all providers that are grouped under one tax ID number (TIN) must only submit nine measures for the entire group. This is an ideal option when you have providers – such as an emergency room doctor – who do not document for any of the required ambulatory eCQM measures. GPRO allows you the freedom to look at performance results across your organization, choose the measures that your Eligible Professionals perform best at as a group and report on those measures. The whole group benefits because there is no need for each individual to report on nine measures.

If I register for GPRO and I change my mind, can I switch back to individual reporting?

It is best to thoroughly research the GPRO option before registering. However, if you do change your mind, you must revisit www.cms.gov and change your election by 11:59 p.m. on June 30th. Before electing to report as an individual, you should be confident that more than 50% of your individual providers can successfully report nine measures each from three different National Quality Strategy domains. Remember, results will still be measured as a group to determine payment adjustments.

Do we need to register for GRPO every year or does the initial registration carry forward?

You must restate how you plan to report through www.cms.gov every year. If you elected to report your Eligible Providers as individuals last year and you want GPRO this year, then you must register before June 30th. If you reported as GPRO last year, you still have to let CMS know that you want to report using the GPRO option again this year.

If we have several physicians under one tax ID but different EHRs, can we report as GPRO?

This is very challenging because the data must be combined from both EHRs. When reporting with GPRO, hospitals must submit an aggregate file. Pulling patient data from one EHR is easier than combining data from multiple EHRs. Even after you’ve merged the data into one file, you would then have to determine if the patients in one EHR also have encounters in the other EHR, which poses significant issues with GPRO.

What if we are an institution with no primary care and therefore, cannot find any reportable measures from the CMS list?

In this case, you have two reporting options to consider: 1) reporting through a registry, which offers more than 250 measures to select from; or 2) reporting through a Qualified Clinical Data Registry (QCDR). CMS provides a list of QCDRs that often have a subset of applicable measures. For example, the Anesthesia Society may have measures to cover CRNAs and Anesthesiologists.

If you want to consider GPRO, refer to the CMS 2016 PQRS Implementation Guide PQRS guide to assist your hospital in making a decision.