Webinar – Interoperability and the Practice – June 24, July 8, & Aug 5,2020

The “MIPS with Mike” webinar series

Mike Schmidt, founder and President of HiQ Services, LLC, has been a well-known speaker on how to succeed with MIPS, MACRA, ONC Certified software and the prior Meaningful Use and PQRS programs. The “MIPS with Mike” webinar series will continue to deep-dive on specific topics and the first HiQ webinar will be “Interoperability and the Practice.”

Why practices should think about Interoperability now, during the pandemic

The MIPS program and its payment adjustments is not going away, despite the pandemic and the rush to telehealth workflows. In fact, Interoperability in the MIPS sense is a more strategic issue for most small specialty practices than new telehealth software.

With the Office of Civil Rights having announced that it would not enforce standard HIPAA security regulations during the pandemic until further notice, practices may use widely-available consumer video-chat solutions to provide remote care while continuing to chart on their existing CEHRT. Once OCR resumes its enforcement, the key requirement will be to have the video chat software vendor sign a Business Associate Agreement to allow use of software which necessarily deals with electronic Protected Health Information. The vendors of several key non-specialized products, such as for example GotoMeeting, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, have already announced that their products are secure and that they are willing to sign BAAs. Expensive, specialized HIT solutions may not even be necessary! A “steady at the helm” approach may be particularly appropriate for small specialty practices who can neither afford additional significant IT costs and for whom office visits will continue to be required for the vast majority of patient encounters.

Despite limited MIPS accommodations which CMS has already made for the 2019 MIPS performance year and is expected to make for the 2020 MIPS performance year, MACRA (a law passed in Congress a few years ago with rare bi-partisan support) requires CMS to have non-transitional MIPS scoring by 2022. The MIPS “Performance Threshold” was estimated by CMS to be 74.01 out of 100 points for the 2022 MIPS Final Score, which means the following:

• The other MIPS performance categories (Quality, Cost & Improvement Activities), worth only 75 out of 100 points in sub-total, will only provide enough for an essentially neutral MIPS payment adjustment;
• Without a high Interoperability score, a practice will miss out on any significant positive MIPS payment adjustment, which may be +19% of the practices annual Medicare Part B professional service fees;
• The key Interoperability measures needed to exceed the “Additional Performance Threshold” and earn the bulk of positive payment adjustments will be “Provide Patient Access”, “Receiving/Incorporating Health Information” and “Sending Health Information” – together worth 80% of the MIPS Promoting Interoperability score and thus 20 points towards your MIPS Final Score – as though by design exactly what is needed to earn MIPS exceptional performance payment adjustments;
• A further risk factor for practices is the mandatory attestation for “Prevention of Information Blocking” requiring practices to:
  • implement technologies, standards, policies, practices, and agreements reasonably calculated to ensure, to the greatest extent practicable and permitted by law, that the certified EHR technology is implemented in a manner that allows for timely access by patients to their electronic health information (including via the mandatory but often overlooked “Patient Access API”) and that allows for the timely, secure, and trusted bi-directional exchange of structured electronic health information with other health care providers (electronic C-CDA documents sent via Direct messaging or other secure protocol);
  • respond in good faith and in a timely manner to requests to retrieve or exchange electronic health information, including from patients, health care providers, and other persons, regardless of the requestor’s affiliation or technology vendor.

Small practices can hardly afford to give up such a large amount of income, especially given our new pandemic-triggered reality!

Our webinar focuses on the details of exactly these issues:

• Part 1: Interoperability for Care Coordination – including clarifications on the terminology such as referral loops and referrals vs. transitions of care, the CMS requirements for the Sending and Receiving measures, and pragmatic, actionable steps for the practice to maximize their score;
• Part 2: Interoperability for Patient Engagement – a review of the regulatory requirements, and explanation of the overlooked and changing requirements for a Patient Access API (patient apps vs. patient portals), an explanation from a patient-centric perspective, and a clear step-by-step explanation of the practice responsibilities for providing patients access to their health information;
• Part 3: Prevention of Information Blocking – a demystified explanation of what this means for the practice, in practical, easy-to-understand terms.

Register for the Webinar:

Please simply fill out the registration form for one of our two scheduled live dates (June 24, July 8, or August 5):

https://hiq-services.com/webinars/interoperability-and-the-practice/

The cost per participant is $100, or $250 for an unlimited number of attendees from a single practice; also, discounts or gratis invitations are available from certain HiQ partners. Only one participant needs to register online per practice; we will follow up with you via e-mail to get the list of all other practice participants. We hope to see you then!