are you ready for MIPS and MACRA? 3 survival tips

When working with Medicare patients, it’s essential that you are familiar with MACRA (Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act) and MIPS (Merit-Based Incentive Payment System). These two programs affect the way Medicare patients are processed and covered.

MIPS gives healthcare providers a score that indicates how they will be reimbursed for their Medicare patients. MACRA essentially creates a payment structure that rewards healthcare providers based on performance. These processes were put in place to provide smarter healthcare for U.S. patients. Here are 3 tips to help your business succeed with these new requirements:

1. Make sure your business can meet ‘meaningful use’ requirements.

Meaningful use (the Medicare EHR Incentive Program) is part of MACRA, and it’s an incentive for healthcare providers to maintain appropriate electronic health records. If your organization isn’t already doing this, it’s important to put a framework in place to make it easy for all your practitioners to adhere to meaningful use requirements at every step of the job. It’s also important to continually maintain your meaningful use standards.

2. Be prepared to keep your standards consistent.

To motivate healthcare practices to continue providing high-quality service, MIPS increases its standards every year. Make sure your entire practice understands the requirements they need to observe and that you have oversight in place to ensure compliance. Diligence is essential in order to get the Medicare payouts you need.

3. Streamline, modernize, and improve your processes.

Preparing for changes means staying current; not just with the regulatory environment, but with all the emerging tools and technologies that are becoming part of the new reality of healthcare. In general, more patient-centric approaches are ascendant.

Remote sampling technologies, which allow patients to take their own blood samples outside the clinic, with greater ease and convenience, are an example of a new trend to watch, an innovation that will reverberate across the spectrum of care.

MIPS and MACRA are cause for celebration. Both of these programs are excellent for patients because they reward healthcare providers for providing the best quality of care. They represent smarter healthcare trends that enhance the value patients get from their doctor’s visits, requiring fewer visits to clinics.