Roji Intel Blog

Dave Halpert 0
0
ACO ReportingPQRS ReportingQualified Clinical Data Registry ReportingValue-Based Payment Modifier
June 30, 2015

Orthopedists’ Survival Kit: How to Succeed with Medicare PQRS and VBPM

Pay for Performance success takes careful thought and management, particularly for specialty practices. Under Medicare’s PQRS and Value-Based Payment Modifier (VBPM), specialties have fewer measures available, which narrows reporting options—making it harder for you to meet PQRS and compare well against your peers. For Orthopedics, this is especially true. Nearly 200 PQRS measures have a Registry reporting option, but many orthopedic surgeons still have a difficult time finding nine measures across three National Quality Strategy (NQS) Domains (including one cross-cutting measure), where performance is good enough to report. All too often, orthopedic surgeons get trapped, reporting on measures where performance…
Read More
Dave Halpert 0
0
ACO ReportingPopulation HealthQualified Clinical Data Registry ReportingValue-Based Payment Modifier
June 23, 2015

How to Get Paid for Your Population Health Program: Part 2

If you’ve written off population health initiatives as too expensive, think again. Pay for Performance means just what it says: you need to demonstrate better outcomes than your peers if you expect to reap benefits from Medicare. And, if you fall behind, you’ll risk ACO losses or Value-Based Payment Modifier (VBPM) penalties. As we discussed last week, by focusing on Medicare’s programs and reimbursable Medicare Wellness Visits, your organization can build a solid foundation for your population health program—and get paid for it. Medicare’s new Chronic Care Management Services offer another cost-effective way to build out your population health program.…
Read More
Dave Halpert 0
0
ACO ReportingPopulation HealthQualified Clinical Data Registry ReportingValue-Based Payment Modifier
June 16, 2015

How to Get Paid for Your Population Health Program: Part 1

How can you succeed in Pay for Performance if you can’t risk revenues on a program that may not produce results? Especially if your competitors have made the investment and can prove better outcomes, raising the bar for everyone? It’s not enough simply to tighten existing procedures or to focus on maintaining high standards To stay competitive, you need to improve patients’ outcomes and reduce costs over your own history and against other organizations, even without a lot of cash on hand.  If you don’t, you’ll face even greater financial risks under ACO participation or independently through VBPM penalties. But…
Read More
Theresa Hush 0
0
PQRS ReportingQualified Clinical Data Registry ReportingValue-Based Payment Modifier
June 9, 2015

Does Your EMR Tell Medicare the Right Story About Your Patient Quality?

Reporting physician quality to Medicare through an EMR is an easy and affordable approach—at least on the surface. But be careful when using EHR Direct Reporting for PQRS 2015, so you don’t cost your organization as much as 4 percent in Medicare penalties or create an unappealing profile of your quality in Medicare’s public reporting. Navigating successfully through the maze of Medicare’s new Value-Based Purchasing requires a thorough understanding of how all the different reporting and performance programs interact. Unless you have a good grasp of how your EMR reports your quality data, you risk setting yourself up for costly…
Read More
Dave Halpert 0
0
PQRS ReportingQualified Clinical Data Registry ReportingValue-Based Payment Modifier
June 2, 2015

GPRO Registration Ends June 30—Don’t Lose Your PQRS Reporting Advantage!

The clock is winding down—have you registered your practice for the Group Practice Reporting Option (GPRO) for PQRS?  To report as one collective unit, you must register with Medicare by June 30. If you don’t complete this step, you’ll still have to participate in PQRS, but your group’s providers will need to report on a person-by-person basis, which can be an administrative nightmare and make it much more challenging to succeed under the Value-Based Payment Modifier (VBPM). Tick-tock! GPRO registration is only the first administrative step. There’s a lot more to know in order to avoid penalties, either from failure…
Read More
Theresa Hush 0
0
AttributionPopulation HealthPQRS ReportingQualified Clinical Data Registry ReportingValue-Based Payment Modifier
May 12, 2015

Prove You’re a Top Tier Health Care Provider: Six Essentials for Your Value-Based Purchasing Game Plan

You know you need to shift your organization toward Value-Based Health Care. It’s a trend that’s here to stay, and you’re deep into planning your strategy. Question is, what’s the right game plan that will enable you to reap financial benefits by proving you’re a top-tier provider that offers quality, cost-effective health care? All too often, providers focus on adopting a reimbursement and delivery model that assumes risk without addressing fundamentals. Remember, this is not just about reorganizing to manage risk without engineering for improvement. While you must take steps to participate in the new Value-Based Health Care models, you…
Read More
Dave Halpert 0
0
AttributionPQRS ReportingQualified Clinical Data Registry ReportingValue-Based Payment Modifier
May 5, 2015

Who Else Cares for Your Patients? How the Wrong Patient Attribution Can Skew Your VBPM

So, exactly who are your patients? Sounds like a silly question. But when it comes to Medicare’s patient attribution methodology, the answer is not obvious. Medicare attributes patients to providers and practices in order to calculate components of the Value-Based Payment Modifier (VBPM). Like it or not, certain patients can be attributed to your practice, even if their conditions are not under your clinical management, skewing your VBPM. If you don’t understand the rules, you risk significant penalties. This is true for all providers, but most apparent in specialty groups. As a Qualified Registry and QCDR that reports all measures…
Read More
Dave Halpert 0
0
Population HealthPQRS ReportingQualified Clinical Data Registry ReportingRegistry ScienceResearchValue-Based Payment Modifier
April 28, 2015

Better Hypertension and Diabetes Outcomes: From Basic Measurement to a Plan for Improvement

Are you caught in a squeeze between avoiding penalties in both PQRS and the Value-Based Payment Modifier (VBPM)? Medicare’s move to Pay for Performance has created a Catch-22 for many groups:  you may have enough data to report enough PQRS measures, but if you choose to report measures where your performance is below the CMS mean of your peers, you risk penalties under the VBPM. As a CMS reporting registry that integrates VBPM Consultation Services, we commonly find at least one or two measures per client with scores that could negatively affect the VBPM if used in PQRS reporting—especially for…
Read More
Dave Halpert 0
0
Population HealthPQRS ReportingQualified Clinical Data Registry ReportingValue-Based Payment Modifier
April 21, 2015

Your VBPM Incentive Payment Could Be Higher Than You Expect—If You Act Now

Here’s a lesson in budget neutrality, Medicare style: If you are penalized under PQRS for non-reporting or under the Value-Based Payment Modifier (VBPM) for poor performance, your money will be paid out to providers earning a VBPM incentive. That’s right—to your competition. If you’re on the losing end of this equation, you could lose up to 4 percent of your Medicare Revenues.  But if you’re on the winning side, you may be rewarded with a much higher net gain than an additional 4 percent. The Basic Arithmetic of PQRS and the VBPM The law creating the VBPM requires it to…
Read More
Dave Halpert 0
0
Population HealthPQRS ReportingQualified Clinical Data Registry ReportingValue-Based Payment Modifier
April 14, 2015

How to Organize Your Academic Medical Center for PQRS 2015 Success

Take a deep breath. The last-minute flurry of adjustments and updates to last year’s PQRS reporting is over. And—brace yourselves. It’s time to dig into PQRS 2015, which, if you’ve been following our posts, requires a whole new level of rigor to avoid penalties under Pay for Performance. (Download our free eBook, Insider’s Guide to PQRS 2015 Reporting, if you need to catch up.) Nowhere are the new reporting complexities greater than for Academic Medical Centers (AMCs).  Everyone is scrambling to ensure that workflow adjustments sync with new reporting requirements and general measure changes, but AMCs must contend with additional…
Read More