Healthmonix Advisor

Blockchain. It’s one of the biggest buzzwords in the Health IT industry today⁠—and no wonder, because it seems to be an extremely promising technology, one that we've been keeping our eyes on for a few years now. Still, as cool as it seems, we have a long way to go. That’s why in this pair of blogs, we’re going to look closely first at the possibilities, and then at the hazards, that go hand in hand with this exciting trend.

Look, we understand, we really do. MACRA is frustrating for doctors who want to spend more time talking to patients than checking boxes, and it’s often hard to recognize what, if anything, its requirements are actually doing to move practices toward value-based care. So of course it’s tempting to believe all those rumors (you know, the ones that have been flying around since the law was passed in 2015) about how MACRA and MIPS are on their way out, how CMS will be repealing the law any minute, how maybe it is an option to cover your ears and whistle until it goes away.

But we’ve been paying close attention to the shifting landscape of CMS policy since we released MIPSPRO in 2009, and in our expert opinion, the law isn’t going anywhere any time soon. Here are three reasons why.

The CY 2019 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule involves a slew of regulatory changes that will apply to the 2019 performance year. Of course, wading through the final rule to find and understand the most important features of the policy can be grueling; but you’re in luck, because we’ve already done it so you don’t have to! In today’s blog, we’re focusing on the MIPS Improvement Activities (IA) category.

In our last blog we gave an overview of the MIPS Quality Performance Category and discussed its reporting requirements. This week, we'll look more in-depth at how this category will be scored for the 2019 performance year.

The CY 2019 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule involves a slew of regulatory changes that will apply to the 2019 performance year. Of course, wading through the final rule to find and understand the most important features of the policy can be grueling; but you’re in luck, because we’ve already done it so you don’t have to! In today’s blog, we’re focusing on the MIPS Promoting Interoperability (PI) category.

The CY 2019 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule involves a slew of regulatory changes that will apply to the 2019 performance year. Of course, wading through the final rule to find and understand the most important features of the policy can be grueling; but you’re in luck, because we’ve already done it so you don’t have to! In today’s blog, we’re focusing on the MIPS Quality Performance category.

Between 2018 and 2019, 74 of Medicare’s 561 accountable care organizations (ACOs)—or 13%—left the program, according to research by Leavitt Partners. The same research also found that 26% of ACOs that reached the end of their three-year agreement opted to not renew it at the end of 2018.

Health systems face a unique challenge when navigating the CMS Quality Payment Program (QPP). All currently available options to comply with the QPP require the submission of some form of clinical quality measures. With multiple specialties and often multiple sources for tracking billing and clinical data, aggregating all available data in a coherent, efficient, and centralized way can seem nearly impossible for the average health system. This case study demonstrates how MIPSPRO assisted one of their health system clients by streamlining their quality reporting process.

A new CMS toolkit, released through the CMS ACO learning system, shows five innovative care coordination strategies that have helped Medicare ACOs find success through shared savings.

On April 22, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced the CMS Primary Cares Initiative, a new set of payment models that are part of HHS Secretary Alex Azar’s value-based transformation initiative. The CMS Primary Cares Initiative will be administered through the CMS Innovation Center. CMS expects the new programs to shift at least one quarter of people in traditional Medicare out of fee-for-service.