Advanced APM Requirements and Incentives – MACRA Monday

Last week we looked at the MIPS and APM programs within MACRA and who will be participating in which program. Today we’ll briefly cover some of the specific requirements to participate in the APM program and the incentives you’ll receive if you are qualified and participate as an APM.

As mentioned before, most people won’t participate in an APM, but will participate in MIPS. This is particularly true because even if you’re part of an ACO or other value based care program you may or may not qualify as what they call an Advanced APM. Last week we listed the various APM definitions for who could be an APM, but we didn’t include this other criteria that is required for an APM to be considered an Advanced APM.

  • Use Certified EHR
  • Base Payment on Quality
  • Bears Financial Risk or Medical Home Model

If you want to dig into the advanced APM criteria, you can do so in the APM webinars that CMS did. They dive into the nitty gritty details of each, but we’ll pass on covering them here since they’ve done a great job and it only applies to a small group of our readers.

If you do not qualify as an advanced APM, then you’ll need to participate in MIPS, but you’ll do so with some favorable MIPS scoring.

APM Incentives
For those organizations that qualify as an Advanced APM, starting in 2019 you’ll receive up to a 5% bonus. This bonus will continue through 2024. In 2026, the bonus will be replaced with a higher fee schedule update.

Worth noting is that the MACRA APM program creates extra incentives for those who are already participating in one of the value based reimbursement programs. The MACRA APM program does nothing to change the current APM functions or rewards values. The 5% bonus will be on top of what was already planned for APMs.

Plan of Action
If you think that you might be part of an organization or program that will qualify as an APM, you’ll need to figure out if you qualify as an advanced APM. You should be able to consult your ACO or other APM organization to find out if you’re considered an advanced APM or not. The key question you’ll want to ask is, Am I considered an Advanced APM or not? Only Advanced APMs are excluded from MIPS.

That’s the short overview of the APM program. Next week we’ll start talking about the MIPS program.

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

   

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