TMA PREP TIPS FOR MACRA
While the details of exactly what the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) will require of physicians must wait for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to issue the final rule, TMA has developed a wide array of free and low-cost services and materials to help Texas physicians prepare. Stay up to date on the latest at the TMA MACRA Resource Center,
www.texmed.org/MACRA. TMA’s Five-Step Checklist for MACRA Readiness, www
.texmed.org/5stepMACRAready, covers the research you can undertake, decisions you can make, and steps you can take now to get your practice as ready as possible. The October issue of Texas Medicine will cover this material in greater detail. For health information technology (HIT) questions — including help on purchasing an electronic health record system for your practice — see TMA’s HIT Resource Center,
www.texmed.org/hit, or contact the TMA HIT helpline by emailing
HIT@texmed.org or calling (800) 880-5720. The TMA Education Center,
www.texmed.org/education,
offers live and on-demand courses at special member prices. MACRA-related education includes courses for those who plan to take part in MACRA right away and suggestions other practices can take to offset the 4-percent Medicare penalty that will come in 2019 for those who don’t participate in 2017. Created by TMA in 2015, TMA PracticeEdge helps physi-
cian practices as they transition to value-based payment models. If you are a primary care physician interested in forming an accountable care organization (ACO) or joining an existing organization, contact
info@TMAPracticeEdge.com, or call (888) 900-0334. TMA PracticeEdge clients include ACOs with Medicare Shared Savings Program, commercial, and Medicare Advantage contracts.
terms in Congress, and he reminds physicians of the significance of that achievement. “People are forgetting what brought
us here,” Dr. Burgess told Texas Medi- cine in an exclusive interview. “I get criticized a lot for what’s going to hap- pen in 2019. ‘My gosh, there could be some reductions in reimbursement.’ Yes, if you do nothing as far as any quality reporting between now and 2019, a doctor’s practice in Medicare could receive a reduction of 4 percent. Current law, as it was a year and three months ago, that could have been 30 percent with the SGR and, of course, PQRS and meaningful use, value- based modifier, all of those things ag- gregated to a significantly larger cut
— maybe as much as 10 times as much as a nonparticipating physician might see in 2019.” He also points out that both the
Obama administration and Republican leaders in Congress have been quick to blame the fee-for-service system as the primary cost driver in Medicare.
“On the right and the left, that notion exists and persists,” he said. That in- creased the political costs and the trade-offs needed to keep a fee-for- service Medicare option for physi- cians in the MACRA law. Dr. Burgess says he also worked
hard to include a new performance measure — the CPIAs — in the bill. “It’s really simple stuff,” he ex- plained. “Do you have an email ad- dress? Do you have a Saturday clinic from time to time? Do you have night- time office availability? When we were writing it, there was a lot of criticism.
‘You might as well just call this bill Ev- erybody Gets an A. You’re making it too easy.’” It’s up to organizations like TMA,
Dr. Burgess says, to show physicians how to be successful in the post-SGR world. “My hope is, people will look at 2019, see the risk of a ding, and realize with a little bit of work they can get a payment bump up,” he said. “So in- stead of a ding, you get a bump. How’s that? That would be good.”
46 TEXAS MEDICINE September 2016
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64