The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on October 14 issued its final rule implementing the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA). WSHA staff is working diligently over the details; however, some immediate items to note:
- CMS provides details about the 2017 transition period announced last month. Only physicians who choose to report no performance data next year will experience payment penalties in 2019; those who report for at least 90 days will be eligible for positive payment adjustments. See the CMS “Pick Your Pace” item on the WSHA MACRA webpage.
- CMS has increased the low-volume threshold that exempts physicians from all performance reporting, from $10,000 in annual Medicare revenue and fewer than 100 Medicare patients to $30,000 in revenue or fewer than 100 patients. CMS estimates that this change will exempt 32.5 percent of physicians and other clinicians from the program.
- CMS has further reduced performance reporting requirements and has reweighted the resource use component of the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) to zero for 2017.
CMS provides summaries, fact sheets and other resources on its website.
Please join WSHA/WSMA and ECG Consultants for the half-day conference from 1 – 4:30 p.m. November 9, MACRA and Value Based Care: Creating your organization’s strategy. Click here to register
At noon December 14, local CMS officials — including Dr. Nancy Fisher, chief medical officer for CMS Region 10 — will join the WSHA for the webinar MACRA: CMS Final Rule – Refining Your Strategy to explain the final rule in more detail. The one-hour session will explain the revisions that CMS made to its proposed rule and the course corrections your organization may need to make to comply — and succeed — with MACRA requirements.
Register for the webinar online here. For questions, contact Cathy Gibb, senior director of quality at WSHA at cathyg@wsha.org or call 206-216-2539. (Cathy Gibb)
