This American College of Physicians (ACP) position paper, initiated and written by ACP's Medical Practice and Quality Committee and approved by the Board of Regents on 21 January 2017, reports policy recommendations to address the issue of administrative tasks to mitigate or eliminate their adverse effects on physicians, their patients, and the health care system as a whole. The paper outlines a cohesive framework for analyzing administrative tasks through several lenses to better understand any given task that a clinician and his or her staff may be required to perform. In addition, a scoping literature review and environmental scan were done to assess the effects on physician time, practice and system cost, and patient care due to the increase in administrative tasks. The findings from the scoping review, in addition to the framework, provide the backbone of detailed policy recommendations from the ACP to external stakeholders (such as payers, governmental oversight organizations, and vendors) regarding how any given administrative requirement, regulation, or program should be assessed, then potentially revised or removed entirely.

The U.S. health care system is in the midst of transforming from a fee-for-service system to a value-based system that delivers high-quality and cost-effective care. Quality reporting programs and increasing transparency of performance are meant to encourage physicians and hospitals to invest in improving the delivery of care. In 2006, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services implemented the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS). The PQRS is an incentive and penalty payment program for eligible professionals who report data on quality measures for covered professional services furnished to Medicare beneficiaries. The program gives eligible professionals the opportunity to assess the quality of care they are providing to their patients and compare their performance on a given measure with that of their peers. This article discusses the history of PQRS, the 2014 PQRS, and how it affects other quality programs.