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It’s that time of year again. Medicare’s Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) final changes for 2023 are in.  

With many changes on the horizon for clinicians' Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), it may be helpful to take stock of the program as it stands in preparation for 2023. Here, you will discover what MIPS is, how it works, why you should care about participating in MIPS, and what's going to change in the coming year. 

Concerned about ransomware attacks? You should be. With over 66 percent of healthcare organizations reporting they experienced a ransomware attack in 2021, proactively protecting your patients’ data has never been a higher priority.

The Office of Civil Rights announced in early July that they have settled 11 new HIPAA Patient Right of Access cases, bringing the total number to 38 in the past two and a half years and the total fines to over $3,000,000. These cases occur when providers fail to provide patient records to requestors within the 30 days allotted by HIPAA. The largest of the new fines was $240,000 for failure to provide complete records to one patient. Previously the largest fine for one failure was $130,000. 

With the introduction of episode-based measures in the Cost category, many specialty providers are going to be seeing their Cost score affecting their overall MIPS score for 2019. With this new information coming out with the Final MIPS 2019 scores, many providers are asking how they can manage their score and maximize their MIPS points for the Cost category in the future.

Although all physicians suffer from burnout to some degree, some feel it more keenly than others. According to a recent survey in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, orthopedic surgeons have one of the highest burnout rates, with nearly half the specialty expressing feelings of emotional frustration, depression and depletion.

No two doctors are alike. So it goes without saying that each doctor’s method for collecting and documenting each patient’s visit is equally varied. That’s why it’s important for practices to choose an EMR system that easily allows all doctors in the practice to customize EMR templates to match his or her unique workflow. But not all EMRs that promise do-it-yourself customization are created equal. Most EMR vendors will provide templates geared toward a range of medical specialties, and these are a good place to start. However, having the ability to mold that template into a doctor- and treatment-specific document that can both capture the relevant clinical information and interface seamlessly with the practice management system is key. For instance, in an orthopedic practice, one doctor may specialize in sports injuries, so their customized template will be geared toward ligament strains and tears. This won’t come close to resembling that of another doctor in the same practice whose focus is on joint reconstruction and replacement, which will have a field for recording information about osteoarthritis. Yet, since each doctor has created their own template to capture exactly the information they need, the same EMR allows them to work at high efficiency with little or no disruption to their patient visit.