Clarifying recent modifications to the nation’s health care policies, American Medical Association (AMA) President David Barbe recently made several recommendations for practitioners to improve efficiency in a posting on the AMA website.
In the posting, Barbe cited The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) of 2015, which created the Quality Payment Program (QPP) offering practitioners a choice of two payment models: the merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and Advanced Alternative Payment Models (Advanced APMs).
“(MACRA) was one of the most significant policy changes health care has seen in the past 25 years,” Barbe said in the posting, urging physicians to re-enroll before the end of the calendar year.
Barbe advised enrolling in professional society registries, which can help explain MIPS, and in AMA’s own STEPS Forward program for task management. Additionally, he said in the posting that using electronic health records is a positive step even through not mandatory. Upgrading staff with new talent can help to handle system upgrades skillfully; and finally, care access can improve with tools such as patient portals or extra office hours.
“I hear from colleagues who are perplexed by … policy changes coming out of Washington and who feel unprepared for those changes,” Barbe said in the posting. “I believe we have an opportunity to work together to transform patient care, as well as the way we manage our practices.”
