Moshe Starkman, Senior Director, Value-based Reimbursements, nThrive
The first two years of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) Quality Payment Program (QPP) are in the books and many organizations are wondering if their strong performances will ever be met with a significant upside adjustment.
Year 1 (2017) enjoyed very high participation levels, 95% of eligible clinicians, but very low upside adjustments. Between the Test Pace option, artificially low bar
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DAS Health Acquires Health IT and Medical Billing Conglomerate
DAS Health, an industry leader in health IT and management, announced today it completed the acquisition of a Milwaukee-based healthcare solutions conglomerate, including WRT Specialties, Inc., Easy PC Solutions, LLC, EasyMed Billing, LLC and Houston-based Systech Solutions. This follows DAS’ acquisition of Houston-based Altex Business Solutions earlier this year, and three Chicago-based companies at the end of 2018. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.DAS Health Growth
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ELLKAY Acquires X-link to Expand Healthcare Interoperability Footprint
ELLKAY, LLC, a provider of healthcare connectivity and interoperability solutions has acquired the assets of Tampa-based Legal Easy, Inc., including the industry-leading X-Link medical software interfacing solution. With the strategic acquisition, ELLKAY expands its healthcare footprint and empowers providers with an easier, more cost-effective way to achieve Promoting Interoperability (PI) objectives and quality measures. In addition, the acquisition strengthens ELLKAY’s core mission of
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Applied Analytics: Making the Dream of Cost-Controlled Population Health a Reality
Moshe Starkman, Senior Director, Value Based Reimbursement, nThrive
Ninety percent of a solution is accurately defining the problem, however, in healthcare, much like nearly every other industry, more time and energy is spent on fixing perceived symptoms rather than identifying root caU.S.es.
Today we will explore the contribution that applied analytics has made and continues to make on bending the dramatic U.S. healthcare cost curve. To do this well we will first explore the primary cost
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Physician Practices Strategy to Developing A Strong Chronic Care Management (CCM) Program
Zachary Blunt, Sr. Manager of Product Development, Population Health at Greenway Health
More than three years have passed since the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) introduced its separately billable non-face-to-face Chronic Care Management (CCM) service. This was intended to help more than two-thirds of individuals on Medicare who suffer from multiple conditions receive more coordinated, regular primary care. The hope was that a focus on managing chronic conditions would
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AMA-RAND Study: Physician Payment Models are Becoming More Complex
According to a new joint study by the RAND Corporation and the American Medical Association, physician payment models are becoming more complex and the pace of change is increasing, creating challenges for physician practices that might hamper their ability to improve the quality and efficiency of care despite their willingness to change.The study is a follow-up to a similar one conducted in 2014 to assess how physician practices were responding to alternative payment models. These models are
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Value-based Care Success: 7 Stages of the Health Data Life Cycle
Back in the day – the late 1960s, when social norms and the face of America was rapidly changing – a familiar public service announcement began preceding the nightly newscast. “It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?” Today, as the healthcare landscape changes rapidly with a seismic shift from the fee-for-service payment model to value-based care models, there’s a similar but new clarion call for quality healthcare: “It’s 2018. Do you know where your data is?”Compliance with the
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The Day My Dad Got Cancer
Somehow, as a 20 year pediatrician, I have had a charmed life as it relates to the big C. Of course, my residency training at St Louis Children's Hospital had many months on the pediatric cancer wards, bone marrow transplant patients, the works. In my many years of general practice, cancer is but a tiny portion of my outpatient medicine experience. I read once that statistically we "get" a Pre-B Cell ALL every seven years. Poor little ones with T Cell Lymphoma, Burkitt's Lymphoma, and
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Providers Name Optimizing IT/EHR Performance as Top Challenge in 2018
With true implementation beyond a system go live, optimizing IT/EHR performance (32 percent) and overcoming IT staff shortages (31 percent) were cited almost equally as the most significant challenges in 2018, according to the sixth annual Health IT Industry Outlook Survey conducted by Stoltenberg Consulting Inc. The report reveals 40 percent of health IT leaders rated measuring improvement in patient care quality as the top business objective in 2018, followed by identifying areas of cost
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MACRA: The Yardstick for Quality that Health Systems Need
The number of quality initiatives is rapidly rising in the healthcare industry as stakeholders shift their focus toward the value of patient care. In addition, with the recent implementation of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), the rules surrounding healthcare reimbursement are being rewritten, incentivizing healthcare providers to prioritize the quality of patient visits over the quantity.Historically, it has been difficult to achieve consensus on defining quality;
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