MACRA and CMS – A #HITsm Chat Summary and Commentary

Note: Join us Friday at Noon ET (9 AM PT) for the latest #HITsm chat.

We had a really unique opportunity to have the Acting Administrator of CMS, Andy Slavitt, join us as host of the #HITsm Twitter chat. His participation in the Twitter chat was a good illustration of how he led things during his time at CMS. We’ll see how things play out with this new administration, but I can personally say that I’m going to miss Andy Slavitt at CMS. He’s brought a fresh engagement from CMS that I hope will continue with his replacement and will continue with the other employees at CMS.

In the #HITsm chat that Andy hosted, we had a wide ranging discussion about MACRA and CMS. The chat was extremely active, so if you missed it live, be sure to read through the whole #HITsm transcript.

Here we’ll just highlight a few of the tweets that we found interesting and add a bit of commentary as well.


I really think this isn’t lip service, but is the culture of many at CMS now. That’s a huge win. There’s still a lot of work to be done and we need more voices willing to talk with CMS so that they hear the right messages, but it’s been a huge step forward.


I think many might think this was the tweet of the chat. There are a lot of pressures in healthcare that are shocking.


I loved this tweet. Many in government aren’t open to changes, but I think many on social media just spout complaints without a plan that will be better than what’s happening today.


All about the patients!


Seriously. If you’re on Twitter and care about healthcare, then you should be following Aisling. And do it for much more than on point emoji sharing.


My feeling is the Advanced APM participants are going to be the happiest group that participates in MACRA. There are good incentives and in many cases they get them for things they were already planning to do.


Nice way to frame it. Push for something better.


The previous tweet correlates well with this tweet. There has to be a groundswell of people talking or nothing will change.


A bit off topic, but interesting to think about healthcare without EHRs. Not to mention data liquidity.


I love this concept. Those that choose not to participate in MACRA and APMs will later ask all these questions about why something was done a certain way and complain about the way it was done. CMS is asking for ways that it should be done. Do you want to be part of helping them fashion a system that makes sense or just let them decide and you’ll be responsible for the choices they make?


If you just lurk (ie. read, but don’t share) on the #HITsm chat, that’s fine. Although, people shouldn’t be afraid to participate too.


Interesting prediction. Especially with the next one below.


Another different view and prediction. I’m probably with the people that aren’t sure how we’re really going to measure quality. That’s a challenging problem.


This is one of the things that has me excited about healthcare IT. So much opportunity now that we’re electronic in many places.


Interesting comparison to chew on.


Easy to tweet. Hard to accomplish and illustrate that you indeed did accomplish it.


And we’re only going to see more of this. The 1 platform idea is not going away. This is true even if they have multiple EHR.


There are plenty of legal and reasonable ways to block data in healthcare. You have to want to share data or it won’t happen.


Quite the endorsement for scribes. I know a lot of docs who love them!


I want to see how this plays out.


The fact that eCW recently put out a security notice on those that don’t upgrade their EHR is a great example of how many organizations don’t ugprade. It’s bad.


Yep!


There was a lot of requests for CMMI to go forward and comments about it being a good program.


This will be fun to see.


It was great having Andy host the discussion.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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