From the American Academy of Ophthalmology

Ambulatory surgery centers and hospital outpatient departments have gotten a reprieve from reporting on a problematic cataract quality measure that went into effect April 1. Today the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced it is delaying implementation of ASC 11-Cataracts until January. CMS will revisit the measure in the 2015 OPPS/ASC proposed rule.

The Academy, the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, the Outpatient Ophthalmic Surgery Society and the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association lobbied against the measure’s application to the facility setting. The Academy originally helped develop the quality measure for clinician use in the Physician Quality Reporting System, not for use in the facility setting.

Congress specified that ASC and HOPD quality reporting should meet several standards. Facility-level measures should:

• Relate to the episode of care within the facility;
• Use data available within the facility;
• Assess data facility staff can collect; and
• Produce conclusions the facility could act on.

“This measure fails on all these benchmarks,” said Michael X. Repka, MD, medical director for governmental affairs at the Academy. “We are pleased to see CMS respond to our concerns.” The Academy joined several groups in protesting CMS’ use of the measure for facilities’ quality reporting.

CMS stresses that delay of ASC 11-Cataracts does not affect the data collection period for any other ASC quality reporting program measure.

For more information, contact the Academy’s Government Affairs division at 202.737.6662.