even more important to its ability to remain an independent clinic, Dr. McMillion says. Regardless of a practice’s style or circumstance, TMA’s PSO is poised to help physicians with the strategies they need to maintain their financial viability and prepare for what the fu- ture health care environment holds. The PSO will offer prod- ucts and services to enable practices to improve their perfor- mance; streamline and improve administrative functions and technologies; and return physicians’ primary focus where it belongs: patient care. TMA’s PSOs team identified four categories of products and
services to meet practices’ varying goals and levels of sophis- tication. They are:
• Practice transformation: tools and services to strengthen practice viability and prepare practices for new payment models, including optimizing staff workflow, strengthening billing and collections processes, and making use of new technologies to improve patient care and compliance.
• Clinical integration: services and technologies for physi- cian network development, network administration, and contracting that provide administrative support to existing physician networks and help for independent practices that want to collaborate for contracting and managing popula- tion health.
• Value-based care models: technology, strategies, and staff- ing to help practices secure value-based contracts or meet requirements for incentive payments, including case man- agement; care management; population, quality, and utili- zation analytics; and patient engagement.
• Enterprise solutions for physician networks and groups, in- cluding payer functions for those that negotiate direct con- tracts with employers and other payers, and technologies that enable health information exchange among the health community.
The PSO is expected to launch this year. Dr. Arnold says that staying ahead of today’s practice pressures is key. “We know that there are going to be increasing pressures on us in light of new [health reform] legislation, changes in coding with ICD-10, you name it. So we are making sure we stay vi- able as a company, as well as provide good medical care, and we intend to be ahead of the game. We don’t want to be play- ing catch-up.” n
Amy Lynn Sorrel is the associate editor of Texas Medicine. You can reach her by tele- phone at (800) 880-1300, ext. 1392, or (512) 370-1392; by fax at (512) 370-1629; or by email at
amy.sorrel@
texmed.org.
Not just any EHR
One key to medical practices’ success is that they are not only implementing robust electronic health re- cord (EHR) systems, but also are using them, accord- ing to the Medical Group Management Association’s (MGMA’s) 2013 report Performance and Practices of Successful Medical Groups. Below are some features of the systems used by what MGMA considers “bet- ter-performing practices.” Their EHRs can:
• Support medication orders and maintain active medication lists;
• Support e-prescribing; • Record and store patient demographics; • Maintain an up-to-date problem list of current and active diagnoses;
• Record and chart changes in patient vital signs; • Record patients’ smoking status;
• Implement clinical decision support rules relevant to the practice’s specialties and track compliance;
• Report ambulatory clinical quality measures to state and federal quality programs;
• Provide patients with an electronic copy of their health information upon request; and
• Integrate with practice billing/claims systems.
TMA has tools and resources to help physicians implement EHRs and achieve meaningful use. The EHR Implementation Guide, EHR Product Compari- son Tool (TMA member login required), Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Comparison, EHR Incentive Program Eligibility Tool, and Medicare and Medicaid incentive program instructions are available on the HIT section of the TMA website,
www.texmed.org/hit. You also can contact TMA’s HIT Help Line at (800) 880-5720, or email
HIT@texmed.org.
February 2014 TEXAS MEDICINE 23
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