posted
on Thursday, May 12, 2016
Just when healthcare practices might have been able to wrap their heads around Meaningful Use, it appears it may come to an end sooner than planned.
As if healthcare didn’t have enough acronyms already…PQRS, VBPM, CGCAHPS, ACO, PCMH – get ready to familiarize yourself with MIPS – the Merit-based Incentive Payment System. A couple of weeks ago, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a proposed rule (962 pages to be exact) that tries to describe the future of Medicare reimbursement. And it doesn’t appear that MIPS will be a voluntary program, like MU. (With the exception of alternative payment models, but that’s a post for a different week).
Basically MIPS would be a new way of ‘scoring’ key areas of provider performance – but the provider will have more say in the areas being measured. The four key proposed categories of measure are Quality, Resource Use (Cost), Clinical Practice Improvement Activities and Advancing Care Information.
At the end of the day one of the desired core outcomes remains constant – paying providers for helping patients become healthier. This video “Delivery System Reform: Paying for What Works” by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services really simplifies the issues at hand.