The MACRA due date to finalize capturing measures is December 31st, 2017. Failure to capture these measures will have a cascading result as it regards to Medicare payment. I actually have been doing presentations about this topic for quite some time now and the only shock I have experienced is the knowledge level of my audiences. To make matters worse, I was looking at Medicare’s guidance documents via CMS website and I was very impressed with their efforts until the point I realized that some of the information was not necessarily accurate. Of course, when you consider that the new draft rule was released in June 2017 and that the same has 1,058 pages, it is no surprise that everyone is having a hard time keeping up.
If you still don’t know what MACRA represents, let me quote CMS:
“The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) is a bipartisan legislation signed into law on April 16, 2015.
MACRA created the Quality Payment Program that:
- Repeals the Sustainable Growth Rate formula
- Changes the way that Medicare rewards clinicians for value over volume
- Streamlines multiple quality programs under the new Merit Based Incentive Payments System (MIPS)
- Gives bonus payments for participation in eligible alternative payment models (APMs)
MACRA also required us to remove Social Security Numbers (SSNs) from all Medicare cards by April 2019.”
The rules for 2018 have also been released and so far they look promising. Yet I know many of you will agree that it is somewhat difficult to see patients, manage a Practice and keep up with all of these rules that keep changing on us. Based on everything that is going on around us I decided to provide you with a brief summary of some of the key dates and one basic recommendation:
Brief summary of MACRA due dates:
- January 01, 2017 Data Collection Starts
- October 01, 2017 Last date to start collecting data to qualify for the 90 days submission
- March 31, 2018 Data to Medicare is due
- January 01, 2019 Effective date for payment adjustments
Recommendations:
Attend events like the Healthcare Compliance and Innovation Conference
Frequently Visit CMS Quality Payment Program Page