CMS Planning MACRA Overhaul to Decrease Administrative Burden

According to a recent report from the Healthcare Financial Management Association, the CMS is planning to significantly overhaul MACRA in order to decrease the administrative quality measure reporting burden.

The CMS plans to bring the reporting burden of MIPS, and individual physicians, in line with that of hospitals and the APM, in order to make quality measures more accessible across the board.

“The measures are basically the same, but what people have to do—the rules of the road, if you will—on the scoring are very different between the two,” Kate Goodrich, MD, director of the Center for Clinical Standards and Quality and CMO at the CMS, told the Healthcare Financial Management Association. “And that creates problems for health systems that use a single [electronic health record (EHR)] to report on behalf of clinicians and to report on behalf of hospitals.”

The report also noted that the CMS is looking to significantly overhaul how data is reported for quality measures. CMS is reviewing way to automate data collection from EHR, where possible, for each quality measure.

The CMS highlight that they will not be delaying requirements for physicians office to meet 2015-edition EHR technology, as the new methods of automated data extraction will likely require strict EHR compliance.

“We’ve delayed this a couple years, but last year we finalized that this would be required starting in 2019; we are not backing down on that, so we are not changing that and will reiterate that,” she said.

The CMS also plans to implement more alternative APMs this year in an effort to hasten the transition to value-based care models.

—David Costill

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