Roji Intel Blog

Theresa Hush 0
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ACO ReportingAlternative Payment Models (APM)Future of Health CareMACRAMeaningful UseMerit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS)Population HealthPQRS ReportingQualified Clinical Data Registry ReportingValue ModifierValue-Based Health Care
June 7, 2016

Proposed MACRA Rules: Your APM Strategy for Risk Readiness

If you chose not to participate in Medicare ACOs or Bundled Payments in recent years, CMS is planning to change your mind. Proposed MACRA Rules reveal a complex carrot-and-stick approach to inducing providers into risk models. Make no mistake: it’s just a matter of when, not if, you participate in one of the Alternative Payment Models (APMs). It will pay (literally) to begin planning your path to risk now. Here are five important provisions in the Proposed Rules that you need to understand: Full qualification as an Advanced APM earns a 5 percent lump sum bonus, exemption from participation in…
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Theresa Hush 0
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ACO ReportingFuture of Health CarePopulation HealthQualified Clinical Data Registry ReportingRegistry ScienceResearchValue-Based Payment Modifier
August 4, 2015

ACOs and the Referral Revolution Part 2: How to Align Objectives and Referral Practices

There’s no getting around it. Disruption in referrals under new Value-Based Health Care programs will upset both primary care and specialty practices under any change scenario. Physicians with historical relationships will undoubtedly resent an edict to redirect referrals, if they don’t understand or believe comparative data on cost and quality. On the other side of the equation, physicians who accept that aligning referrals with outcome data is part of being in an ACO will object if they see that referrals are driven, instead, by physician employment status. Every participant in an ACO must eventually accept that achieving shared savings will…
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Dave Halpert 0
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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.…
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Dave Halpert 0
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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…
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Theresa Hush 0
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Population HealthRegistry ScienceResearch
May 19, 2015

Population Health: Fact or Fiction?

For the past couple of years, “population health” has become a popular catchphrase.  Everyone is talking about it, adopting it or selling it. But if you ask anyone what it means, you’ll get very different answers. That’s because there seems to be only one point of consensus—we need to focus health care efforts on specific populations. Should you care? I think so, and here’s why: Providers and ACOs are beginning to spend a lot of money on population health, yet no one is measuring the effects of those efforts and whether they actually achieve positive outcomes. Fuzzy Definitions Can Lead…
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Dave Halpert 0
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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…
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Dave Halpert 0
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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…
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Theresa Hush 0
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Future of Health CareMedical EducationPopulation HealthPQRS ReportingQualified Clinical Data Registry ReportingRegistry ScienceResearchValue-Based Payment Modifier
April 7, 2015

Academic Medical Centers at Risk: How to Survive Medicare and Medicaid Value-Based Health Care

Academic Medical Centers (AMCs) provide care to the most complicated patients and have surmounted some of the worst clinical challenges of all time. Yet the biggest issue to threaten survival of AMCs might well be Medicare and Medicaid Value-Based Purchasing. While AMCs incorporate the training of new physicians in both community and highly specialized care, the clinical complexity of their patient population is higher than other institutions. At the same time, AMCs are the most likely medical centers to offer trauma and burn care, new medical technology and clinical research. But with typically high volumes of Medicare and Medicaid patients,…
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Dave Halpert 0
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Population HealthPQRS ReportingQualified Clinical Data Registry ReportingValue-Based Payment Modifier
March 31, 2015

ACO v Group Practice P4P: How Medicare Costs and Quality Calculations Affect Your Bottom Line

Now that Value-Based Health Care defines the landscape, reporting for revenue is on its way out. Value-based quality is in. Medicare’s transition to Pay for Performance gives providers just three options—and no out—for participating in reimbursement models that reward for higher quality and lower cost: Build or participate in an Accountable Care Organization; Report PQRS and submit to the risk of the practice-based Value-Based Payment Modifier; Receive automatic financial penalties. Given that the last option is not really viable, which way should providers participate in Medicare’s Value-Based Health Care? An Accountable Care Organization (ACO) is a network-based model for managing…
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Thomas Dent, M.D. 0
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Population HealthRegistry ScienceResearch
March 17, 2015

Placebo v Nocebo: How to Test Methods of Physician Engagement in Population Health

The Holy Grail for value-based health care is to improve patient quality and cost outcomes, while stabilizing or reducing annual aggregate payouts for insurance and government benefits. By holding physicians and health systems accountable, the theory goes, providers will engage with patients in a process leading to better status and lower costs. The key word here is “engage,” because none of this happens in a vacuum. Provider engagement is essential for making change happen. But if engagement is the key, how do physicians’ mindsets, attitudes and language play into outcomes?  Providers are not a homogenous group, any more than patients…
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