How Do Publicly Reported Medicare Quality Metrics for Radiologists Compare With Those of Other Specialty Groups?

To characterize and compare the performance of radiologists in Medicare's new Physician Compare Initiative with that of other provider groups.

CMS Physician Compare data were obtained for all 900,334 health care providers (including 30,614 radiologists) enrolled in Medicare in early 2015. All publicly reported metrics were compared among eight provider categories (radiologists, pathologists, primary care, other medical subspecialists, surgeons, all other physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants, and all other nonphysicians).

Overall radiologist satisfaction of all six Physician Compare Initiative metrics differed significantly from that of nonradiologists (all P ≤ .005): acceptance of Medicare-approved amount as payment in full, 75.8% versus 85.0%; Electronic Prescribing, 11.2% versus 25.1%; Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), 60.5% versus 39.4%; electronic health record participation, 15.8% versus 25.4%; receipt of the PQRS Maintenance of Certification Program Incentive, 4.7% versus 0.3%; and Million Hearts initiative participation, 0.007% versus 0.041%. Among provider categories, radiologists and pathologists demonstrated the highest and second-highest performance levels, respectively, for the two metrics (PQRS and MOC) with specialty-specific designs, but they ranked between fifth and eighth in all remaining non-specialty-specific metrics.

The performance of radiologists and pathologists in Medicare's Physician Compare Initiative may relate to the extent to which metrics are tailored to the distinct aspects of their practices as diagnostic information specialists. If more physician participation in these programs is desired, more meaningful specialty-specific (rather than generic) metrics are encouraged.