Medicare Access and Chip Reauthorization Act: What You Need to Know About MACRA

In 2015, Congress passed the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), which further pushed providers and CMS down the path of value-based reimbursement and away from fee-for-service reimbursement. Effective in 2017, MACRA requires CMS, through the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), to consider quality, cost, advancing use of clinical information, and other clinical practice improvement activities in determining how much to adjust clinicians’ Medicare Part B payments. MACRA also incentivizes provider participation in various Alternative Payment Models (APMs) by providing additional compensation to qualifying participants.

Getting a Grasp of MACRA and MIPS

For further information on MACRA and how to prepare for its approaching implementation, request a recording of the special June edition of our free webinar series, Podcast, which took place on June 23, 2016. Through a panel discussion, we highlighted issues that affect providers as well as our recommendations to providers that will allow them to take full advantage of the changing Medicare reimbursement structure. Webinar attendees learned how to:

• Distinguish how CMS will score MIPS-eligible clinicians, and predict how those scores will affect their MIPS payment adjustments;
• Recognize what constitutes an alternative payment model, and determine how providers can qualify to participate in an advanced payment model;
• Evaluate the pros and cons of participating in MIPS as well as contrast the various alternative payment models; and
• Understand the many ramifications of MACRA e.g. the need to align employed physician compensation models with MIPS payments, the need to develop a viable alignment model within which to operate under MACRA, the need to re-tool clinical operations in order to optimize performance under MIPS, the need to build a functional IT infrastructure in order to capture, aggregate and report MIPS data and many others.

If you would like to learn more about this topic and how Coker can assist your organization, call 1-800-345-5829 x2021 to speak with Ellis “Mac” Knight, MD, MBA, Senior Vice President/CMO.