Epocrates, Inc., announced Thursday a partnership with Covisint, a Compuware Company, that aims at helping doctors get paid for quality reporting.

This year the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) program focuses on a number of chronic conditions, including kidney disease, back pain and diabetes mellitus.

Epocrates partnership with Covisint allows eligible professional to access to the company's, CMS-certified DocSite PQRI registry in order to accurately report on quality measures for those and other conditions.

Sean Handel, vice president for Epocrates' subscriber business, says doctors find DocSite very easy to use, cutting back on a lot of paperwork hassle and administrative work.

"Epocrates is committed to helping physicians adopt technology that fits into their workflow and improves the efficiency of patient care," said Handel. "Covisint and its DocSite solution significantly reduce the time and labor involved with the PQRI program, freeing up physicians' time to do what matters most – provide quality care for their patients."

Officials say the collaboration will help the nearly 300,000 U.S. physicians in the Epocrates network benefit from the 2010 pay-for-reporting program.

"Epocrates has an outstanding reach to hundreds of thousands of physicians," said John Haughton, MD, chief medical information officer for Covisint. "Now, with Covisint, physicians in Epocrates' network will easily achieve PQRI status – a low-risk first step in the clinical payment process that enables physicians to deliver better healthcare and get paid more efficiently."

Covisint DocSite has assisted healthcare professionals submit PQRI data since 2007 and assisted more than 4,500 providers with submitting data to CMS for the 2009 PQRI reporting year. With more than 45 percent of U.S. physicians using its products and services, Epocrates officials say the company is in a position to help more physicians learn about the DocSite registry and help them complete the documentation process faster.

Handel says doctors can access the DocSite registry now, and if they are an Epocrate's member they will receive a $100 discount.