Will MACRA Be Repealed or Replaced? – MACRA Monday

This post is part of the MACRA Monday series of blog posts where we dive into the details of the MACRA Quality Payment Program.

I’ve heard a lot of doctors still suggesting that MACRA is going to disappear. I’ve heard every argument imaginable, but the most common one is that the Trump administration is going to get rid of MACRA. While I can understand this fear, I don’t think it has any real foundation. In fact, I think the opposite is true.

As Neil Versel aptly points out, the Repeal and Replace legislation that didn’t quite make it through the house was silent on healthcare IT. I love how Neil puts it:

Wondering what the proposed American Health Care Act—the Republican plan to “repeal and replace” the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—says about health IT?

Nothing. It says nothing.

Wondering what the American Health Care Act says about promoting innovation in healthcare?

Nothing. It says nothing.

Wondering what the American Health Care Act says about holding providers accountable for the care they deliver or about moving away from the inefficient—and often dangerous—fee-for-service reimbursement model?

You guessed it. Nothing. Nada. Zero.

The closest things we’ve heard about the new administration impacting healthcare IT is Tom Price saying that he wants MACRA to not put undue burden on doctors and the possibility that ONC could be on the chopping block.

The former is something that every person at HHS has said for years. No doubt Tom Price is a more provider-friendly HHS secretary than past administrations but given the legislation, I don’t think Tom Price will change MACRA much. As to the later, even if they get rid of ONC, that doesn’t mean MACRA will disappear. It’s still the law of the land. MACRA would just move to another part of HHS. Look at it more as a corporate reorg versus something that will significantly impact MACRA.

All in all, the fact that technology was never really part of the repeal and replace discussion gives me more confidence that MACRA isn’t going anywhere. What do you think? Will MACRA survive? Are there other factors that could influence MACRA’s future?

Be sure to check out all of our MACRA Monday blog posts where we dive into the details of the MACRA Quality Payment Program.

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.

1 Comment

  • MACRA reporting requirements will change. For sure. We are at a crisis level of burnout in the MD community. Finally the screams are being heard at the leadership level. From AMA to CEOs, to local medical leaders, the clerical burden, reporting burden and such has decimated the medical profession. Even if they do not “repeal” MACRA, its dead. It will be ignored and further set back the lofty HIT goals. Just today this hit:
    http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2017/03/28/physician-burnout-is-a-public-health-crisis-a-message-to-our-fellow-health-care-ceos/
    EHRs, clerical work, data entry, reporting etc has spooked even the “top” academic institutions.
    If Dr Price and Veema sell us out, or ignore the crisis, the profession may never recover for a generation.

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