On June 25, 2018, the Physician Clinical Registry Coalition submitted a comment letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services expressing our concern about the proposal in the FY 2019 Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems proposed rule to remove the Public Health and Clinical Data Exchange objective and measures from the Promoting Interoperability Program no later than 2022.

The Coalition strongly urged CMS to retain these measures as a necessary incentive for hospitals and, perhaps more urgently, EHR vendors, to share data electronically with public health entities and clinical data registries.  The Coalition believes these measures help to facilitate and promote the use of Qualified Clinical Data Registries and other clinical outcomes data registries.  The Coalition also expressed its support for comments submitted by the Society of Thoracic Surgeons regarding how CMS can further facilitate price transparency by providing registries with the access to Medicare claims data required by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (“MACRA”).

Click here to read the full letter.