The Healthmonix Advisor

Physician practices are confronting new operational and business challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a mounting financial and administrative toll this pandemic has placed on practices, forcing all to adapt in a variety of areas.  Much of the conversation around COVID-19 has appropriately focused on addressing the pandemic and treatment of COVID-19 patients, however, we are also keenly aware of the other impacts on practices. 

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 Cost category.

A recent perspective article in the New England Journal of Medicine begins with a bold claim: that patient relationship categories and billing-code modifiers, which clinicians have been able to voluntarily submit since January 1, 2018, “may be one of the least known but most important provisions of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA).” In today’s blog we’ll explore how patient relationship codes may, as the article predicts, end up impacting reimbursement.

As laid out in the 2019 MACRA final rule*, one of the ways CMS hopes to expand participation options in the program’s third year is by offering certain facility-based clinicians, if they participate as a group, the option to use facility-based Quality and Cost performance measures. CMS expects to release a facility-based scoring preview for this option, which does not require any data submission, in Q1 of 2019. In today’s blog, we’ll take an in-depth look at the details of facility-based scoring and how it will be applied.

In year two of MIPS and beyond, CMS is including an Improvement score for Quality and Cost measures. This week we take a deep dive into what this score entails, as well as what you need to know to keep yours ahead of the curve.

With the first performance year of the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) drawing to a close, you may have just started getting accustomed to how MIPS reporting works. Although the 2018 MACRA final rule introduced changes to how MIPS performance data should be captured for the upcoming performance year, it may be a relief to hear that largely the changes just build upon the existing 2017 regulations.

Today, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released the final rule with comment period for the Quality Payment Program under MACRA. Consistent with what was discussed in the proposed rule, the MACRA Quality Payment Program will have two tracks: (1) Advanced Alternative Payment Models (APMs) and the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). 

As a young adult from a small town in Ohio, the prospect of leaving my hometown to go to college was a frightening one. I was anxious to leave the familiarity of my high school, and the routine I had perfected to remain an A student. The only expectation that I had was given to me by my teachers, who reported that college would be significantly different and more challenging than high school. As I packed up my ‘63 International Scout to drive to college in August of 1975, the fear of failure was present and strong. However, when I arrived, I found the classes were similar, the pedagogical approach was the same, and as long as I showed up and did the work, I could do as well as I did in high school.