Providers To Use Tech For Chronic Care Management
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
With CMS now reimbursing providers who actively manage the care of their patients who have two or more chronic conditions, a survey shows many providers plan to use health IT to meet the requirements.
On January 1, CMS began offering reimbursement for providers who actively manage care delivery for Medicare patients who have two or more chronic conditions. According to mHealth News, providers who wish to be reimbursed must use a certified EHR, have patient consent, and deliver five core care management services and at least 20 minutes of non-face-time follow-up care outside the office each month.
The words “non-face-time” and “outside of the office” are encouraging providers to turn to telehealth technology including home-based monitoring tools and video conferencing.
“Medicare beneficiaries got an important treat for home care of chronic care management, remote patient monitoring of chronic conditions, and other services when provided via telehealth,” Jonathan Linkous, CEO of the American Telemedicine Association said, according to mHealth News. “It has been a long time coming, but this rulemaking signals a clear and bold step in the right direction for Medicare. This allows providers to use telemedicine technology to improve the cost and quality of healthcare delivery.”
A Kryptiq survey found that, of the providers they asked, 76 percent said they would organize and structure to meet chronic care management program requirements within the next six months. When they asked how many would try to meet the program requirements in 12 months, 92 percent said they would.
“It can be tough to hear that your EHR implementation, the result of much organizational blood, sweat, and tears, is inadequate for emerging models of value-based care such as chronic care management,” stated Malcolm Costello, General Manager of Population Health at Kryptiq.
“Fortunately, many providers are already extending their staff into care coordination activities in pursuit of other value-based initiatives such as pay for performance or patient-centered medical home. We are committed to providing them with purpose-built, affordable health IT that extends their EHR investment, leverages existing staff and outreach activities, and ensures the reimbursement requirements are met to enable program billing.”