MINNEAPOLIS, December 26, 2007—The 2008 Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) program begins January 1. This program, initially launched by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in July 2007, encourages quality improvement through the use of clinical performance measures on a variety of clinical conditions.

To assist physicians and other eligible professionals who may elect to participate, the American Medical Association, in collaboration with CMS, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., and the National Committee for Quality Assurance, has once again developed participation tools for all of the measures in the 2008 PQRI program. The tools are designed to:

• aid physicians and other eligible professionals wishing to participate in the program to identify measures relevant to their practice
• facilitate the data collection required to report clinical performance data

For each of the 119 measures in the program, the tools are now available online at www.ama-assn.org/go/toolsMedicarePQRI

Technical specifications and release notes can be found on the CMS PQRI Website at: www.cms.hhs.gov/PQRI