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MACRA Measures & Insights from Health Catalyst Helps Healthcare Organizations Solve the MACRA Reporting PuzzleSALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Physicians have long complained about the growing burden of government regulation, especially its effect of reducing time spent with patients. A 2016 study by Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College and the Medical Group Management Association found that physicians and their staff spend between 6 and 12 hours per week processing and reporting quality metrics to the government – at a cost of $15.4 billion a year. As a recent Health Catalyst/Peer60 survey confirms, that burden is expected to significantly worsen in 2017 and beyond as physicians struggle to report quality metrics for the Medicare Access & CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) – the federal law that changes the way Medicare pays doctors. Commercial health insurers are expected to follow the government's lead with similar programs of their own. Passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress, MACRA requires physicians who participate in its financial incentives to report on a subset of 271 quality measures. In complex organizations, successfully achieving performance targets and submitting accurately for MACRA incentives will require integrating multiple measures across financial, regulatory and quality departments. To help identify and align healthcare organizations' selection of the MACRA quality measures, Health Catalyst® today announced the release of MACRA Measures & Insights™. Built on an industry-leading data and analytics platform integrating over 120 data sources including claims and all major EMRs, the new application helps healthcare organizations track and monitor all MACRA measures across multiple departments. Moreover, with MACRA Measures & Insights, organizations for the first time can quickly spot areas where their physicians are performing best, and therefor which quality measures to report to Medicare to maximize payment under MACRA. "Healthcare organizations expend significant human resources to compile, interpret, keep up with and understand the impact of regulatory compliance measures, and this problem will only get worse under MACRA," said Dale Sanders, Executive Vice President of Development for Health Catalyst. "MACRA Measures & Insights will significantly reduce that burden while making it easier to maximize Medicare reimbursement and to monitor performance against measures year over year." Dorian DiNardo, PMP, Health Catalyst Vice President and Product Line Manager for Operations and Performance Management, added, "The nice thing about the Health Catalyst platform is, it contains virtually all of the granular data in a healthcare system, including claim and other external data, so we can quickly combine that data to support effectively any reporting or analytics requirement, including MACRA and any changes that might come along in the future." Identify Measures to Optimize At-Risk Contracting Conversely, health plans can use the application to identify populations of patients that are appropriate for sharing risk with their provider partners. Survey: compiling quality measures is health systems' biggest MACRA worry Only about a third of healthcare organizations were prepared to tackle MACRA's reporting challenges as of late last year, according to the survey. Just 35 percent of respondents answered affirmatively when asked whether they "have a strategy and are well on [their] way to being ready" for upcoming MACRA reporting. Ready or not, most do expect to participate in the program, with only 5 percent of those surveyed planning to opt out of MACRA entirely. The online survey reflects the opinions of 187 U.S. healthcare executives and senior leaders who work at organizations ranging from the nation's largest urban academic medical centers and integrated delivery networks to critical access hospitals and large physician groups. Deeper dive into MACRA Measures & Insights The application delivers a variety of filtering views to drill down quickly into multiple dimensions for quick decision making at the level of:
MACRA Measures & Insights also reveals performance scores in three initial MIPS performance quadrants, with more to come:
The application includes measure calculations validated to be using the correct data (per CMS guidelines) to meet MACRA requirements. It also displays benchmarks for easy comparison. An alignment tab compares quality measures already at-risk with other payers to the MACRA measures, helping to prioritize those best suited for risk in the Quality Payment Program. Explore MACRA Measures & Insights in Live Webinar, Feb. 16 MACRA Measures & Insights Data Sheet Demo MACRA Measures & Insights at HIMSS17 in Orlando About Health Catalyst Media Contact:
To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/macra-measures--insights-from-health-catalyst-helps-healthcare-organizations-solve-the-macra-reporting-puzzle-300407705.html SOURCE Health Catalyst |