CMS Renews QCDR Status for ASCP’s Patient-centric Quality Registry

ASCP’s National Pathology Quality Registry (NPQR) has been granted Qualified Clinical Data Registry (QCDR) status for the third consecutive year by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). With QCDR status, NPQR offers pathologists a way to meet requirements under CMS’s Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS).

The ASCP NPQR is an institution-based registry that will allow pathologists and entire laboratory teams, as well as quality managers and IT managers, to participate in quality improvement initiatives and, with renewed QCDR approval, pathologists can submit for CMS quality reporting.

“This is an important recognition for the NPQR. What sets NPQR apart from other registries is that it also gives pathologists and the laboratory team the tools to initiate tangible quality improvement and make meaningful impacts on patient care delivery,” said Ali Brown, MD, FASCP, Chief Officer of Medical Quality for ASCP.

NPQR, established by ASCP in 2016, offers a wide variety of meaningful, patient-centric measures The measures currently focus on the following topics, and additional topics will be added in the future:

• Monitoring appropriate utilization of laboratory testing
• Improving pre-analytical processes
• Optimizing turnaround time and critical value reporting
• Assessing analytical and diagnostic accuracy

Currently, medical laboratories lack a robust method for sharing best practices and benchmarking performance to drive improvement. Through NPQR, labs have a tool for quality improvement science and the establishment of best practices.

“With NPQR, instead of just giving pathologists a benchmark, we are incorporating ASCP’s vast expertise and educational materials to give pathologists and laboratories the tools to drive change,” Dr. Brown said.

NPQR aggregates data from both laboratory medicine and anatomic pathology lab information systems to provide regularly-updated dashboards that drill down to patient-level details. Participants can then create and share reports with frontline staff, departments, practice managers and hospital administrators, allowing pathologists and laboratory professionals to take a leading role in quality management at their institutions.