ARLINGTON, VA – Pay for performance is not a trial – it's permanent, said a federal healthcare official on Tuesday.

　　P4P is here to stay and healthcare IT is essential to making it happen, said Thomas Valuck, MD, director of the Special Program Office for Value-Based Purchasing for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services at the Third Annual World Congress Leadership Summit held May 7-8 in Arlington, VA.

　　Healthcare IT will help to make performance results transparent, empower consumers and encourage improvement in quality of care, Valuck said.

　　Valuck urged physicians to strongly consider making an investment in their practice now by using healthcare IT to collect and report their data to CMS.

　　Under the CMS Physician Quality Reporting Initiative, physicians can use 74 clinical measures for reporting performance from July 1 through December 31 this year.

　　Many physicians think CMS is “dabbling” in P4P and that the agency will soon forget about it.

　　“We're not going to forget about it,” Valuck said. “The train has left the station. There will be no turning back.”

　　As part of its initiative, CMS is encouraging the adoption of healthcare IT “now and into the future,” Valuck said. In 2010 CMS plans to begin measuring efficiency and how well doctors are using healthcare IT to advance quality of care, including the use of e-prescribing and registry-based reporting.

　　The initiative is currently focused on “simple P4P,” Valuck said. This first stage is “to get doctors engaged in reporting” before CMS increases the measures over time and begins public reporting, according to Valuck.

　　“If physicians want or need a practice year, this is it,” Valuck said.

　　In 2008, CMS will offer doctors confidential feedback on their 2007 reporting results in conjunction with bonus payments, Valuck said.

　　CMS also plans to add patient satisfaction measures in March 2008 and increase incentives for physicians, Valuck said.

　　CMS's main concern at this point is “trying to figure out how to use pay for performance in the right way.” For this, CMS is leaning heavily on pilot programs, Valuck said.

　　CMS expects to have a report for Congress in June on the current results of the hospital P4P program begun in September 2006 that has so far involved voluntary participation of 98 percent of U.S. hospitals “for a relatively small bonus,” Valuck said.