HHS Announces Funding To Help Small Practices Meet Quality Measures, EHR Guidelines
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Five-year, $100,000 initiative is designed to help prepare for the Quality Payment Program.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced an initiative making $100,000 available over five years to help small practices meet the new MACRA quality measures and EHR guidelines, according to an HHS statement. The move is part of the Obama administration’s focus on quality of patient care, the Washington Examiner reports.
The funds will help provide hands-on training specially geared for small practices, particularly in under-served areas including rural areas, health professional shortage areas, and medically underserved areas.
The initiative is responding to a bipartisan law that changes how Medicare pays providers. Under the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, or MACRA law, providers are rewarded for providing higher quality of care rather than quantity of care.
In April, federal healthcare officials released the long-awaited MACRA proposed rule, which repeals the Medicare Part B Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) reimbursement formula and replaces it with the new Merit-based Incentive Payment Program, a quality payment program within MACRA which eligible Medicare clinicians will be participating in.
According to Healthcare Informatics, federal officials were pressed with complaints about the impact of the new regulations on smaller physician practices. CMS itself estimated 87 percent of eligible solo practitioners (some 103,000) would be hit with a negative payment adjustment in 2019, the first payment year of the MACRA program. The new initiative is an effort to help rectify the inequity of payments and guarantee the continued survival of smaller, yet essential, healthcare practices.
“Doctors and healthcare providers in small and rural practices are critical to our goal of building a health care system that works for everyone,” HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell said. “Supporting local healthcare providers with the resources and information necessary for them to provide quality care is a top priority for this administration.”
“Providing these tools to help physicians and other clinicians in small practices navigate new programs is key to making sure they are able to focus on what is most important: the needs of their patients,” B. Vindell Washington, principal deputy national coordinator at HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), said in a statement. “As with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT's funding for regional extension centers, this assistance will help health care providers leverage health information technology to enhance their practices and the care they deliver.”
To learn more about how to apply, click here. For more information on the Quality Payment Program, click here.