Rita Numerof, in a FierceHealthcare essay, warns providers that their performance under the Merit-based Incentive Payment System can influence their overall patient volume.
She notes: “Though the program is not without its challenges and limitations, it does begin to give consumers some information they need to make informed choices and benefit from competition.
“The healthcare industry is in the position of having this transparency imposed upon it via federal action because the providers themselves have been slow to tackle true accountability. A lack of actionable information has led to a situation where the country’s largest payer must provide both carrots and sticks to collect performance information from providers.
“Over the long term, MIPS reporting has the potential to drive patient volume, either directly, through consumer choice, or indirectly, through network selections made by payers. There are significant implications for individual physicians, medical groups and the hospitals whose revenues depend on their referral streams.”
“Many physician groups have raised concerns about administrative burdens under MIPS, and the recent changes to the program were partially intended to address them. But this is still a heavy lift, and providers need to streamline the data collection that supports MIPS wherever possible in order to minimize overhead and ensure data integrity.”
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