With just a few days to go before the final reporting deadline, it’s time to cross the t’s and dot the i’s on PQRS 2014. There may be a few practices still trying to put together a reporting program, but almost everyone using a Registry and who has done the work is ready to […]
Tales from the PQRS Trenches: How to Avoid Harm to Your Practice and Patients
With less than three weeks until the final deadline of PQRS Registry Reporting for 2014 services, many providers are still scrambling to figure out their reporting strategy. They will have few—if any—options for success. It’s 2015, the requirements for PQRS reporting are entering their seventh year, and non-reporting penalties have been applied for two years. […]
PQRS 2015 Reporting: How to Go Beyond Basics to Improve Outcomes
Chances are you don’t have time to read through all 1,200 pages of Medicare’s Final Reporting Rule. But if you don’t understand how CMS is moving the Medicare program, and the health care system at large, toward rewarding providers for quality rather than quantity of care, your organization is in for a rude awakening. In […]
Navigating the ACO Labyrinth to Success: How to Find Your Way to Quality and Shared Savings
Last year, less than one quarter of Medicare MSSP ACOs achieved success in generating shared savings. Not a good report card, given that Accountable Care Organizations form for the explicit purpose of delivering high quality, coordinated care, with shared savings as in incentive to avoid duplication of services. But ACOs are complex endeavors, both administratively […]
Health Care 2014: Where Do We Go from Here?
This week, many of us will sit around Thanksgiving tables, giving thanks for our families and friends, food and shelter, and living in this good land. We might also say, this land where we have access to some of the best health care on earth. So how interesting that we have spent the last several […]
PQRS 2015: How Your Practice and Patients Can Benefit from New Population Health Measures
Good news for providers who have criticized PQRS as mundane and want to improve assessment of patient outcomes and reduce gaps in care: Medicare’s PQRS 2015 Rule is shifting away from rewarding fragmented quality services and toward population health. With the expansion of the related Value-Based Payment Modifier (VBPM), every group can turn population health […]
Specialists at Risk: How To Navigate Hazards in Medicare’s Value-Based Purchasing Programs
Heads up, specialty providers. The future of your practice may depend on three key components in Medicare’s Value-Based Purchasing program. Especially if you work in an independent practice with a higher proportion of Medicare patients than many primary care physicians, your income and practice survival are at risk if you don’t understand implications of the […]
How to Integrate Strategic Quality Initiatives with PQRS Reporting: The QCDR Opportunity
For 2014 and beyond, CMS has created a new mechanism for PQRS reporting—the Qualified Clinical Data Registry. QCDR reporting requirements are the same as for a traditional Registry utilizing individual measures: A provider must report on at least nine measures. These measures must represent at least three National Quality and Strategy (NQS) Domains. Each of […]
Still Not Sure of Your PQRS 2014 Strategy? Delays Will Cost You
If your organization is just beginning to think about PQRS reporting for 2014, beware. End-of-year data collection is no longer enough to meet PQRS requirements. That’s because PQRS is no longer a quality “reporting” program; it’s now all about performance. In fact, waiting to determine your 2014 PQRS strategy until the last minute is actually […]