Study documents immense costs of complying with quality regs
A NEW STUDY, tma.tips/PFquality study, shows U.S. physicians in four specialties spend $15.4 billion a year — that’s $40,000 per physician per year
— trying to report on the quality of care they provide. Looking at just general internists,
family physicians, cardiologists, and orthopedists, the study found physi- cians spend an average of 2.6 hours a week (“enough time to care for ap- proximately nine additional patients”) tracking and reporting data for things like Medicare’s Physician Quality Re- porting System or commercial health plans’ Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set. Nurses and other staff invested
another 12.5 hours per physician per week. The study was funded by the Physicians Foundation, of which TMA Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer Lou Goodman is a board member. Larry Casalino, MD, chief of the Division of Health Policy and Economics in the Department of Healthcare Policy and Research at Weill Cornell Medical College, and the study’s coauthors analyzed the results.
CMS clarifies meaningful use hardship exceptions
THE CENTERS FOR MEDICARE & Medicaid Services (CMS) says physi- cians applying for the meaningful use hardship exception for payment year 2015 (which affects 2017 penalties) are not precluded from receiving the incentive if they successfully attest to meaningful use for 2015. The attestation deadline for the
2015 electronic health record (EHR) meaningful use program was March 11. The original deadline was Feb. 29. Groups and individual physicians
have until July 1 to submit the hard- ship exception application, tma.tips/ hardshipapplication. CMS has pro- vided hardship exception instructions (tma.tips/hardshipinstructions). If the 2015 meaningful use modifi-
cation rule delay prevented you from meeting the criteria for the 2015 re- porting year, you need to review these hardship application categories to see if any of them apply to you:
• Insufficient Internet connectivity, • Extreme and uncontrollable cir- cumstances,
• Lack of control over the availability of certified EHR technology, and
Take TMA’s Physician Survey
Check your email for your invitation to the TMA 2016 Physician Survey. Each month in 2016, TMA sends a survey asking for your opinion and experi- ence with current issues in medicine, in- cluding out-of-network billing and the pro- posed Aetna-Humana merger. If you did not receive an invitation to take a survey, email jessica.davis@texmed .org.
Hundreds of college students, medical students, residents, fellows, and physicians all joined forces to train more than 4,200 Texans in hands-only cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on Feb. 6, 2016. The Texas Two-Step CPR: How to Save a Life Campaign was a free statewide event held in Amarillo, Austin, College Station, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Galveston, Houston, Lubbock, and San Antonio. Participants learned to save a life by taking two steps: Call 911, and begin hands-only CPR.
PHOTO BY ANGELA SILER FISHER May 2016 TEXAS MEDICINE 23
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