If you crunch the numbers by hand or by spreadsheet, you can spend half your day gathering and collecting all the quality reporting and benchmarking data you're required to submit to oversight agencies. Some reporting is voluntary, some is mandatory and all of it can be burdensome.

To ease the burden, many are turning to electronic charting, including Dawn Ashby, RN, BSHA, CNOR, CASC, administrator of the North Hills Surgery Center in Fayetteville, Ark. Her surgical information system collects and crunches all the numbers for her, creating reports she used to have to do manually.

"Since we transitioned to electronic medical records, it made reporting several quality measures a breeze. Technology (electronic medical records) is definitely the way to go to ease the burden," says Ms. Ashby. "Electronic charting has made our center more efficient — from faster billing, being able to track outstanding deficient charts, and having patient information at your fingertips for follow-up or next appointments. Life is much better, I just wish we had converted sooner."

Beware of programs that "do not speak to each other," says Barbara Holder RN, BSN, LHRM, CAPA, the QI coordinator at the Andrews Institute ASC in Gulf Breeze, Fla. "It's like the Tower of Babel" when trying to merge data from her pre-admission software and automated drug dispenser.

Collect data or else

Some quality data programs are tied to your Medicare payment rate, so called "pay for reporting." Under the Ambulatory Surgical Center Quality Reporting (ASCQR) Program, for example, surgical centers must report quality of care data for standardized measures to receive the full annual update to their ASC annual payment rate.

"One of my duties is to ensure we are compliant with required reporting. Indeed, it is a burden!" says Ms. Holder. "No one wants to be solely responsible for a decrease in facility reimbursement. In addition, there is no one-stop shop (that I am aware of) that tells you how, where and when to report."

The ASCQR reporting deadlines have moved from August 15 to May 15, so you might want to get moving, says Ms. Holder. She also suggests you use the auditing tools you'll find at qualitynet.org — if your facility uses a billing company to submit your G Codes, you can audit their data input.

Ms. Holder created that reference chart for reporting on the bottom of p. 36 so you can keep it all straight.

Some data programs are pay for reporting, not pay for performance. A prime example is OAS CAHPS (Outpatient and Ambulatory Surgery Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems). Once the patient-satisfaction survey is rolled out, CMS will care only that you meet the data submission requirements, not your score. At least you don't have to collect the data. You do, however, have to pay a CMS-approved company to survey 300 of your patients in a year. If you don't participate, CMS may withhold 2% of your Medicare reimbursements.

Hospitals have the option to administer the surveys themselves, but ASCs must pay a CMS-certified vendor (who'll charge you anywhere from $10 to $25 per completed survey) to administer the 37-question survey to your patients by telephone or mail and then submit the data to CMS.

Some speculate that when OAS CAHPS becomes a pay-for-performance survey tool and is tied to payment, some facilities could stop reporting if they start getting dinged. We've already seen this with hospitals that have stopped reporting their readmission rates. OSM