The Physician Practice Information (PPI) Survey will be led by the American Medical Association (AMA) in 2023-2024 with the primary purpose to collect representative data on practice expense and hours spent in direct patient care. These data will be collected at the specialty level and shared with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to update the Medicare Economic Index (MEI) and the Resource Based Relative Value Scale (RBRVS).

The AMA has contracted with Mathematica, an independent research company with extensive experience in survey methods as well as care delivery and finance reform, to conduct this survey. The AMA has shared the following materials with the state and national medical associations:

• A PowerPoint presentation summarizing the effort and timeline.
• The methodological report, prepared by Mathematica
• A practice level survey
• A survey to be completed by physicians measuring hours in direct patient care

Timeline

• Mathematica will program and pre-test the survey with 10 physician practices in April – May 2023.
• The PPI Survey will be administered from June 2023 – April 2024
• Mathematica will process and weight the data in May – July 2024.
• Analysis, reporting and documentation will be conducted August – December 2024

Sample

• The sample size will be approximately 10,800 practices representing over 90,000 physicians, plus other qualified health care professionals (QHPs).  The targeted number of completes is 3,240 practices and 9,000 physicians, plus other QHPs.
• Mathematica is using a variety of datasets to identify a representative mix of practices at the specialty level, including the Medicare Data on Provider Practice and Specialty (MD-PPAS), OneKey data and Medicare claims data.
• Practices will be sampled considering size, specialty, ownership, and site-of-service.

Reporting/Use of Data

• The AMA will share data, at the specialty and other QHP level, with CMS for use in the MEI and RBRVS. Data will be reported at the aggregate and specialty level and no individual practice level data will be shared.
• Each participating practice will receive an individualized report.
• Each medical specialty society and professional organization will receive a specialty level report.

Communication

• The AMA is requesting each state society, national medical specialty society, and other relevant organizations to sign on to a letter supporting the survey effort. Each practice will receive this letter as part of the initial request from Mathematica.
• The AMA will share descriptions of the survey effort for state and specialty use in newsletters and other forms of communication.