We have a new meaning behind FEMR:
- Familiarize (Familiarize yourself with your patient population)
- Education (Educate yourself on what the data your collecting is telling you)
- Management (Manage your patient population and provide guidance to your clinicians for efficiency)
- Re-Evaluate (Re-Evaluate, it’s a continuous cycle to ensure a healthy population and satisfied clinicians)
MACRA – What’s your plan?
Fill out this quick questionnaire to see how you can benefit from FEMR Group’s service solutions.
The Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) & Alternative Payment Models (APMs)
How does the Medicare Access & CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) reform Medicare payment?
The MACRA makes three important changes to how Medicare pays those who give care to Medicare beneficiaries. These changes create a Quality Payment Program (QPP):
- Ending the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula for determining Medicare payments for health care clinicians’ services.
- Making a new framework for rewarding health care clinicians for giving better care not more just more care.
- Combining our existing quality reporting programs into one new system.
These proposed changes, which we’ve named the Quality Payment Program, replace a patchwork system of Medicare reporting programs with a flexible system that allows you to choose from two paths that link quality to payments: the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and Advanced Alternative Payment Models.
The MACRA QPP will help us to move more quickly toward our goal of paying for value and better care. The Quality Payment Program has two paths:
- Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS)
- Alternative Payment Models (APMs)
MIPS and APMs will go into effect over a timeline from 2015 through 2021 and beyond.
The MIPS is a new program that combines parts of the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), the Value Modifier (VM or Value-based Payment Modifier), and the Medicare Electronic Health Record (EHR) incentive program into one single program in which Eligible Professionals (EPs) will be measured on:
- Quality
- Resource use
- Clinical practice improvement
- Meaningful use of certified EHR technology
APMs give us new ways to pay health care clinicians for the care they give Medicare beneficiaries. For example:
- From 2019-2024, pay some participating health care clinicians a lump-sum incentive payment.
- Increased transparency of physician-focused payment models.
- Starting in 2026, offers some participating health care clinicians higher annual payments.
Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), Patient Centered Medical Homes, and bundled payment models are some examples of APMs.
- Get more in-depth information on the MACRA Quality Payment Program.
- Attend webinars.
- Read or find answers to many questions about the MACRA Request for Information (RFI).
- View the MLN Connects® National Clinician Call presentation of the 2016 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) Proposed Rule including an overview of MACRA QPP.
- View the MACRA QPP timeline.
- See more about the MACRA QPP and our “Path to Value.”
- See how we decide whether to test a model.
- Learn more about Physician Focused Payment Models (PFPMs) Technical Committee.
- Read and comment on the patient relationship categories and codes.
- Find the episode groups summary and make comments on the Supplemental Episode Groups, Episode Workbooks, and Design Report.