Know these six things about MACRA before transitioning.
By Admin | November 09, 2016
MACRA’s merit-based, incentive payment system will have an effect on any physician, physician assistant, nurse practitioner, clinical nurse specialist, and certified registered nurse anesthetists who bill over $30,000 a year and provide care to a minimum of 100 patients under traditional fee-for-service Medicare.
Therefore, it’s safe to say that anyone working in medicine in the US should be aware of what’s inside of MACRA. Two experts, Tom Lee, PhD, founder and CEO of SA Ignite, and Dan Golder, DDS, principal at Imact Advisors, have started reading the 2,400 page document and have offered their six key takeaways.
- Flexibilities provided in the first transition year, 2017, may carry over into 2018, allowing providers to avoid penalties for not sending CMS data.
- During the first year, doctors will not be evaluated based on cost or resource usage.
- Even though participation flexibilities will exist in the first year, it is in a provider’s best interest to participate as much as possible in the beginning.
- Historical PQRS data will be published this year to benchmark quality measures.
- Vendors will need to provide data, too, taking some of the strain off of providers and clinicians.
- Small practices may find themselves needing to band together in order to alleviate the burden of data reporting.
For more details, read “MIPS breakdown: 6 must-know parts of the MACRA final rule” from Becker’s Hospital Review.
