By Corinne Stroum (Pascale) Director, Program Management – Healthcare Analytics, Caradigm
The Medicare and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) draft has become a novel I can’t put down. Its 962 digital pages tell a compelling story on the future of healthcare metrics. One narrative I follow in particular, is the next generation of quality measurement that shifts the focus of healthcare analytics to the reporting of patient outcomes.
In MACRA’s first year, most Medicare Part B clinicians will be eligible for the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). MIPS will unify existing process-based quality measurement systems into one that promotes diversity of measure types and encourages providers to report on measures which it deems to have more impact.
By Corinne Stroum (Pascale) Director, Program Management – Healthcare Analytics, Caradigm
The Medicare and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) draft has become a novel I can’t put down. Its 962 digital pages tell a compelling story on the future of healthcare metrics. One narrative I follow in particular, is the next generation of quality measurement that shifts the focus of healthcare analytics to the reporting of patient outcomes.
In MACRA’s first year, most Medicare Part B clinicians will be eligible for the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). MIPS will unify existing process-based quality measurement systems into one that promotes diversity of measure types and encourages providers to report on measures which it deems to have more impact.
Here are some examples of measure types that form the performance standards in MIPS:
- Process measures – These are the most simple measures to report on such as whether a provider successfully completed something, such as an evidence-based best practice. This might take the form of an annual influenza vaccination for an at-risk patient. While process measures formed the meat of early healthcare quality metrics, they don’t tell the whole story.
- Outcome measures – These measures get to the heart of clinical care by measuring how providers have influenced patient’s health. For example, has the patient’s depression index score gone down over a six-month period? Did an intervention prevent complications? Did a patient attain cancer remission?
- Intermediate outcome measures – Some outcome measures look at the long term, which may take years to measure performance. Intermediate outcome measures are an important part of the story because they identify other clinical markers to indicate progress along the way. One example is the reduction of fasting blood glucose as part of a larger diabetes management plan.
- Patient-reported outcome measures (PROs or PROMs) – Championed by organizations like PCORI, these measures are the window into the perspective of the patient: how does the patient feel about his/her health (such as the PROMIS survey) or how does the patient report the outcome of treatment?
- Patient experience measures – Cousins to PROMs, patient experience measures ask patients and caregivers about their perception of their care. The Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) and Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) are well known experience measures.
The MIPS quality performance category offers opportunities to achieve bonus payments as well as prevent penalties. CMS will allocate points for quality measure performance depending on a “benchmark decile” – assigning providers level of achievement based on thresholds set during a baseline period. These deciles determine the points that the provider will receive. For measures already with overall high performance – those which CMS deems to be “topped-out” – it will be more difficult to obtain full points, incentivizing providers to explore new healthcare quality measures in which they can demonstrate excellence.
MIPS will require one outcome and high-priority measure as part of a standard submission. CMS deems high-priority quality measures as those which track appropriate use, efficiency, care coordination, or patient safety. Additionally, CMS will score two bonus points for each additional outcome and patient experience measure and one point for each extra high-priority measure that a physician or group elects to report on.
In the first two years of MIPS, the Quality Performance score makes up about half of the performance score. In the following years, the Quality Performance score will balance out with the Resource Use score and clinicians should move from MIPS to advanced APMs. For the next two to three years, however, MIPS will move the needle on quality measurement. It will incentivize providers to report on impactful measures and measures that have not already “topped out”, and to store and transmit quality performance data electronically. This electronic data sets the stage for future victories in healthcare analytics: more data to work with, and more meaningful data.
I highly recommend beginning the process now to develop your MIPS strategy before the performance period begins in 2017. You shouldn’t underestimate the time needed to implement MIPS data and reporting requirements, identify the measures you can be successful in, and plan for how you will drive improved performance in those measures. If you’d like to talk about how Caradigm can help you with your MIPS Quality Measurement strategy, then please leave us a note here.
