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  • Important IRIS Registry Update for Retina Specialists


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    No EHR-integrated IRIS Registry participant has received a penalty for unsuccessful quality performance under the Physician Quality Reporting System. The Academy expects the same achievement for all EHR-integrated IRIS Registry participants under the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System in 2017.

    What You Need to Know

    • If your practice uses the MDI EHR system, you need to ensure you add NPI within the MDI database for IRIS Registry reporting.
    • Mapping updates are being made on two diabetic retinopathy measures because of a technical issue impacting some practices; you may see changes in your dashboard.
    • Mapping and integration improvements do not affect the data the IRIS Registry uses for analytics and research.

    MDI EHR Users

    Physicians using MDI and IRIS Registry should ensure they add each provider NPI within MDI so that IRIS Registry can accurately associate quality data with each physician.  Some practices have encountered delays in data population as FIGMD is not able to properly associate an encounter if the provider’s NPI is not associated with it within the MDI EHR database.

    All MDI practices registered to participate in the IRIS Registry by the June 1 deadline and those practices previously integrated will have 2017 data in the IRIS Registry dashboard by the end of this month. Any practice that has registered to participate with the IRIS Registry by the June 1 deadline but just recently completed their necessary paperwork with MDI will be integrated as soon as possible and contacted by their FIGMD representative shortly.

    The IRIS Registry and MDI EHR experienced technical issues which caused delays in integrating with practices in 2017. It took several months for the IRIS Registry and MDI to work through these issues; however, they have been resolved, and FIGMD has been working to integrate and update data for these practices using MDI. These practices will see their 2017 data in the dashboard by end of this month, if they haven’t already.

    IRIS Registry Mapping

    While implementing the 2017 data dictionary, a technical issue temporarily affected 2017 performance rates for two quality measures: IRIS 2 (Diabetic Retinopathy: Documentation of Presence or Absence of Macular Edema and Level of Severity of Retinopathy) and IRIS 3 (Diabetic Retinopathy: Communication with the Physician Managing Ongoing Diabetes Care) for about 200 practices using various EHR systems..

    We are currently working to resolve the issue. Users affected by the issue will see changes in their IRIS Registry dashboard once FIGMD resolves the issue. If you experience mapping issues, contact your IRIS Registry representative or email irisregistry@aao.org.

    Quality measure-related mapping issues do not affect the IRIS Registry database used for data analytics or scientific inquiries.

    • Quality measures must satisfy stringent specifications, including patient-qualifying criteria, timing restrictions, coding requirements, etc. To satisfy measure standards, practices must document records in a very precise way to ensure correct calculation.
    • Data used for IRIS Registry analytics or research does not have to meet the measure specifications. Mapping issues specific to quality measures do not affect this data.

    Why Use the IRIS Registry

    The IRIS Registry continues to be a free member benefit available to all ophthalmologists who are in good standing with the Academy, and the eligible non-ophthalmologist clinicians who are in their practices. The Academy collects no fees for this benefit.

    In addition to reporting to CMS for MIPS, this member benefit includes the following (and these services are also available should you decide to integrate with the IRIS Registry but report MIPS through another means):

    • Have access to a dashboard that shows performance rates on MIPS measures by practice, by location and by physician that is refreshed on a monthly or quarterly basis;
    • Compare performance against peers in the IRIS Registry national average (with over 10,000 physicians participating);
    • For quality improvement purposes, be measured on 23 subspecialty outcome and resource use measures that are only in the IRIS Registry (these can be electronically extracted as long as the EHR used has the subspecialty fields of interest for measurement);
    • Have the ability to use the IRIS Registry dashboard to complete an improvement project that counts toward requirements for American Board of Ophthalmology maintenance of certification andthe 2017 Merit-Based Incentive Payment System;
    • Contribute to the world’s largest clinical data registry to advance scientific knowledge and information about real-world practice patterns and treatment outcomes;
    • Have the Academy advocate to the federal government on your behalf for fairness and reduction of burden in administration of MIPS;
    • Be able to depend upon the Academy’s measure development understanding, expertise, and experience in the MIPS and other measures (the Academy was involved with the development of or is the steward of the eye care measures included in MIPS).

    New! View our IRIS Registry video tutorials in the 2017 user guide