Maintenance of Certification, Medicare Quality Reporting, and Quality of Diabetes Care

Aligning maintenance of certification with quality reporting may ease reporting burden, but the impact on quality is uncertain. This study compared changes in quality measures from American Board of Family Medicine Performance in Practice Modules (PPMs), Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), and a combined PQRS/PPM for diabetes between 2008 and 2012. Physicians completed 7264 diabetes PPMs, 297 only reported PQRS measures 2 or more times, and 675 completed a combination project, representing more than 200000 patients. After adjustment, PQRS and PQRS/PPM projects were associated with greater blood pressure and cholesterol control improvement than PPM only (P < .05). PPM-only projects had greater improvement than PQRS-only projects on 4 of 6 process measures and greater hemoglobin A1c improvement (P < .05) but were only better on 2 process measures and on hemoglobin A1c control than PQRS/PPM projects. These findings identify differences between quality reporting and quality improvement, suggesting reason to align the 2 programs.