The American Medical Association is undertaking a data collection effort with its independent research partner, Mathematica, to collect representative data on practice expenses and hours spent in direct patient care.

ISMA has joined other state medical associations, national medical specialty societies and health care organizations in signing a letter of support for the effort. Each surveyed practice will receive the signed letter as part of the initial request from Mathematica.

Mathematica will program and pre-test the Physician Practice Information Survey with 10 physician practices in April and May, and the survey will be administered from June 2023 to April 2024. The sample size will be 10,800 practices representing over 90,000 physicians, plus other qualified health care professionals (QHP).

The data will then be processed and weighted in May and July 2024, and analysis, reporting and documentation will be conducted from August to December 2024.

Data will be shared with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in late 2024 to update the Medicare Economic Index and the Resource-Based Relative Value Scale.

The AMA will share the data at the specialty and other QHP levels with CMS for use in the MEI and RBRVS. Data will be reported at the aggregate and specialty levels, and no individual practice-level data will be shared.

Each participating practice will receive an individualized report, and each medical specialty society and professional organization will also receive a specialty-level report.