Back in mid-July, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the proposed rule for the 2022 Physician Fee Schedule. In this two-part blog series, we are going to take a look at some of the more notable changes in the 2022 MIPS proposed rule. In this first installment, we will be summarizing the proposed changes to the 2022 Quality Payment Program.

On July 19, 2021, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the 2022 proposed rule for the Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS). These changes are meant to increase reimbursement rates for OPPS, implement increased penalties for price transparency violations and reverse changes to the inpatient-only list (among other things).

On June 11, 2021, CMS released updated 2021 quality benchmarks via email. This blog post will provide an overview of quality benchmarks, impact of recent changes and tips on how to optimize your quality reporting in 2021 despite the changes. Additionally, we will explain these updates as well as how they will affect your Quality Improvement process for 2021.

After years of bipartisan support, the shift toward greater price transparency in healthcare made a lot of headway starting in 2019 when then-President Trump signed an executive order that required hospitals and healthcare facilities to publish their prices more openly. The idea behind this was that having healthcare facilities publish pricing lists would encourage competition that would in turn lower overall care prices and costs for consumers.

Performing a regular security risk analysis (SRA) helps your practice stay HIPAA-compliant and protect patient data. A MIPS SRA also boosts your Merit-based Incentive Payment System score, leading to a higher chance of receiving a Medicare reimbursement at the end of the year.

As the pandemic winds down and cases of COVID-19 continue dropping in the United States, new rounds of regulatory changes should be expected as part of the return to normalcy. Among the most recent are new OSHA guidelines for healthcare workers per the U.S. Labor Department. In this blog, we will examine some of the main points of this new guidance.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released a wealth of new guidance and resources for MIPS Promoting Interoperability (PI) measures and program requirements for the 2021 reporting period. These changes are based on the IPPS (or inpatient) rule. However, the guidance released in the IPPS rule is usually mirrored in the outpatient rule, which should be released later this summer. As usual, there is a lot to go through. However, most requirements are being carried over from 2020 so only a handful of changes need to be noted by our readers (have no fear; we’ve already done the grunt work, so you don’t have to).

We are entering a new era of healthcare, one where the patient is empowered to direct his or her own treatment. Patients are more informed and involved in their care than ever before and app developers are tapping into people’s desire to be involved in the decision making when it comes to their care. They also expect to be readily provided with their healthcare information upon request, and legislation has been passed that will require such requests be fulfilled in a timely manner.