MACRA could mean improved opportunities for HIE implementation

CMS received more than 3,700 comments by the time the June 27 deadline to submit comments on CMS’s Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) new payment model passed. Various groups in the healthcare industry issued statements and suggestions.

The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange, a public-private organization focused on improve health IT and health information exchanges, issued a release calling for engagement with CMS to improve implementation of the MACRA payment models.

“WEDI’s Payment Model Workgroup is very enthusiastic about the opportunity MACRA implementation presents to accomplish the goals of CMS, payers, eligible clinicians, technology vendors and so many others,” said Charles W. Stellar, president and CEO of WEDI. “The use of incentives and enabling technology to improve quality and promote smart spending in healthcare is crucial as we all work to create significant advancement in value-based reimbursement.”

The group’s comments included six major points:

1. WEDI supports advancing effective, efficient and secure interoperability of clinical and administrative healthcare information and encourages CMS, in the final rule, to adopt measures that achieve those broad goals.
2. The proposed rule outlines the process that eligible clinicians and groups would implement in order to submit data and performance measures for MIPS. CMS should ensure that the MIPS reporting process is simple to understand, conducive to automated reporting and clinically relevant. WEDI also supports the potential use of clinical data registries to report clinical data.
3. WEDI is concerned with the proposed timeline set forth for providers to implement MIPS. WEDI encourages the establishment of an appropriate implementation timeline that meets the need of program participants and their vendor partners.
4. WEDI recognizes and agrees that both health IT developers and health IT vendors will play a critical role in keeping with the spirit of the regulation.
5. WEDI encourages additional industry input in order to identify appropriate APMs to support the intent of the MACRA legislation.
6. WEDI encourages the standards developers to introduce accelerated cycle times for updating standards, especially new and modified standards required to support automation of quality reporting along with incorporating a degree of flexibility to accommodate the needs of a rapidly changing health IT landscape.

The full release can be read here.