A piece in Medical Economics reports that some IT experts say that electronic health record (EHR) systems, which were developed based on fee-for-service payments, can be readily adapted to fee-for-value systems.

“It will take some workflow adjustments within the clinic, but the preparation you do now will make it easier as you move forward,’’ consultant Vanessa Bisceglie, MBA, CEO and president of CareVitality Inc., which provides health IT advisory services, told the publication.

Rick Shepardson, director of optimization solutions at Nordic Consulting Partners, told Medical Economics that physicians can start preparing by first “optimizing their existing EHRs’’.

“He advised physicians to use the functions that come with their existing EHR and understand how all the features can help them streamline administrative and clinical services while also collecting all the data that will need to be recorded and analyzed under value-based reimbursement models.’’

Ms. Bisceglie said that physicians must decide whether they’ll participate as a primary-care (or patient-centered) medical home, known as PCMH, as part of an Accountable Care Organization (ACO) or under another such entity. She said that decision significantly shapes what data needs to be collected and shared, under MACRA.

“Doctors first have to understand how they’re going to move forward, and then they need to understand what measures they’re going to be reporting on; they can pick which measures. Then they have to look at their system and ask whether they have to be customize it or optimized,” she told the publication.

Ms. Bisceglie said such reflection can help physicians “determine which information fields, what data and which computer shortcuts based on how they practice medicine they will need and find most useful under the coming reimbursement model.”

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