According to a note from the American Hospital Association, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has sent an e-mail to hospitals reminding those facilities participating in the Medicare pay-for-reporting program that they will have from July 1 to Aug. 15 to report whether they participate in a systematic database for cardiac surgery.
The measure is one of 13 new quality measures that hospitals participating in the pay-for-reporting program must submit to receive their annual payment update for fiscal year 2010 under the inpatient prospective payment system final rule for FY 2009.
CMS intends to post instructions to the My QualityNet Web site on July 1 for hospitals and vendors submitting data on the measure. The AHA says that hospitals that do not perform cardiac surgeries will be able to indicate that for their data submission.