Modifications to the MACRA 2017 Reporting Period #PickYourPace – MACRA Monday

This post is part of the MACRA Monday series of blog posts where we dive into the details of the MACRA Quality Payment Program.

As we mentioned near the start of the MACRA Monday series, many were predicting a delay or at least a modification to the MACRA timeline. While we’re still waiting for the MACRA final rule to come out with the official changes, Andy Slavitt, Acting Administrator of CMS, has announced some of the changes that will be in the MACRA final rule. Here’s the introduction to why they’re making these changes to MACRA (or the Quality Payment Program as they like to call it now):

We heard from physicians and other clinicians on how technology can help with patient care and how excessive reporting can distract from patient care; how new programs like medical homes can be encouraged; and the unique issues facing small and rural non-hospital-based physicians. We will address these areas and the many other comments we received when we release the final rule by November 1, 2016.

It’s comforting to many to know that they hear doctors pleas for help with all the reporting. We’ll see if the changes in the MACRA final rule will be enough.

As part of the announcement, Andy Slavitt said that the MACRA and MIPS program will still begin on January 1, 2017 with payment adjustments (ie. incentives or penalties) being paid in 2019 like we’d noted before. However, CMS now plans to provide multiple options to eligible physicians and other clinicians to avoid the negative payment adjustments in 2019.

There will now be 4 options available:

Option 1 – Test the Quality Payment Program.
For this option, you just have to submit “some data” to the Quality Payment Program and you’ll avoid the negative payment adjustment. Basically, CMS just wants to make sure you’re connected and ready to participate in future years. While you won’t get a negative payment adjustment, you always won’t get a positive adjustment either. It will be interesting to see what the final rule defines as “some data.” I expect it will be pretty minimal.

Option 2 – Participate for part of the calendar year.
This option allows you to submit information for a reduced number of days in 2017. In other words, your performance period could start after January 1, 2017 and you could just do MIPS reporting for part of the year. This would qualify you for a small positive payment adjustment. I’ll be interested to see the details in the MACRA final rule which outlines how much smaller the payment adjustment will be and how it will be calculated.

Option 3 – Participate for the full calendar year.
This option is basically what’s in the MACRA proposed rule. You can take part for the full 2017 calendar year and potentially qualify for a modest positive payment adjustment. CMS suggests that many will be ready for this. We’ll see if that’s the case given the compressed timeline from when the final rule is published and the release cycles of EHR software companies.

Option 4 – Participate in an Advanced Alternative Payment Model in 2017.
It seems that participation in an Advanced APM is the same as the proposed rule. Of course, if you’re participating in an Advanced APM, then you avoid the penalties and don’t have to worry about MIPS. Nothing new there.

It’s no surprise that fewer penalties and looser requirements has been applauded by many in the healthcare community. It’s pretty rare that people complain about a loosening of government regulation and wish they would require more. Personally, I think the changes are a good thing. CMS will still be able to get data from organizations that participate for the full year. Hopefully, they’ll use that to guide any modifications for future years. However, they also aren’t penalizing those organizations who won’t be fully ready in 2017 because of the short timelines.

Be sure to check out all of our MACRA Monday blog posts where we dive into the details of the MACRA Quality Payment Program.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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