Since the passing of MACRA, the Medicare Access & CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, healthcare providers who treat Medicare patients will be making changes in how they report on the level of quality they provide. New information about the impending changes came from the Department of Health and Human Services this year. The Department of HHS released its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in April of this year in an effort to begin implementing MACRA. It’s a bid to overhaul and modernize the way healthcare providers report information necessary before getting paid. With a goal to reduce the burden of healthcare costs on American taxpayers, MACRA is designed to help providers report data on the quality of services. With that in mind, here are five important things every physician needs to know about MACRA, which will begin implementation in 2019.

Since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (under the auspices of the U.S. government’s Department of Health and Human Services) began paying separately for chronic care management services under a new Current Procedural Terminology or CPT code, many healthcare organizations have questions about the nature of CCM. Medicare has been making payments to reimburse providers for CCM service using CPT code 99490 only since January 1, 2015, so it’s natural for healthcare professionals to have questions still. Now it’s time to learn more about chronic care management.

The pressure to contain costs in the nation’s health care system is mounting. One area where the government is keenly interested in making changes is to promote the quality of care rather than the sheer volume of care being provided. To that end, there is a move to streamline the methods healthcare organizations use to report the level of quality they deliver to each patient. Of particular note is the fact that the Department of Health and Human Services is making changes in how Medicare payments will be paid for in connection with the quality and costs of the services. Modernizing how Medicare will pay doctors for quality is designed to save taxpayers money and help the entire system run more efficiently. In order to get up to speed on the legislative efforts involved, you’ll need to become familiar with the terms MACRA, MIPS and APM.

How satisfied and loyal do you think your patients are? In an era of increased competition, it’s of paramount importance that you nurture each patient and keep him or her satisfied with the services you provide. If you’re looking for one simple secret for boosting patient referrals, the ultimate answer is: make sure your existing patients stay happy and engaged.

It often seems that people are far busier today than they were in recent years, and this is reflected in part by their growing use of smartphones while on the go. Trying to stay constantly connected with friends, family and coworkers with a portable device that you keep with you at all times for research as well as entertainment can make for some frazzled nerves and increased frustration. It’s no wonder that patients may seem less engaged when they come to your medical organization, with so many distractions pulling at them and fighting for their attention. Getting them more involved in healthcare discussions and their treatment plans should be of paramount importance. It’s clear that now is the time for you to prioritize patient engagement.

The following excerpt is from an article found on PR Newswire. It was written by The Advisory Board. ----------------------------------------- While care transformation continues to lead the list of concerns for hospital and health system executives, this year two of the top four topics relate to patients' non-clinical needs, according to The Advisory Board Company's Annual Health Care CEO Survey. Specifically, meeting consumer expectations and patient engagement made notable moves up the list.

Information is power. The more useful and actionable information you can provide to your patients, the better off they will be because when the details sink in, you’ll be able to improve how you care for them. These days, patients have access to more health-related information than ever before thanks to databases connected to the internet and various websites from government, academia and the medical industry. Access to this store of knowledge doesn’t guarantee that patients will take advantage of it, though. And when patients do research on their own, they may wind up inadvertently relying on bogus information that could steer them wrong about treatments, medications and the very nature of diseases, injuries and other ailments.

The more efficient healthcare providers become in the services they provide, especially to patients who are covered through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the more resources we will have at our disposal. To that end, CMS recently released some tips to help eligible professionals, hospitals and critical care hospitals as they attest to meaningful use this year. If you don’t comply with the meaningful use criteria, your organization won’t be eligible to get the financial incentives offered by the government for CMS patients. It’s in your best interest to do your part, so here are four tips for successful meaningful use attestation.

The success of any given country or even a civilization over the long run has a great deal to do with the overall health of its people. By paying close attention to the medical prospects of a group in the face of common ailments, for example, researchers can detect patterns and come up with methods to treat emerging problems before they get too out of hand. From controlling the number of people who fall ill to infectious diseases to dealing with the growing issue of violence in crowded cities, monitoring the health of groups is an important aspect of our medical system.

In a profession like medicine where there are so many unique terms and important phrases to use on a regular basis, doctors, nurses and others find themselves using acronyms to speed up communication.