There’s a Disturbance in the Force We Know as MACRA

Yesterday Anne Zieger wrote about AAFP’s proposals to reduce the EHR Administrative Burdens and then we got this tweet from CMS Administrator Seema Verma:

That’s some really strong language from the CMS Director.

If you care about this topic, you should go and read all of Seema Verma’s tweets, but here are two more for those who don’t want to read them all:

Change is in the air it seems. Many providers are rejoicing if you look through the replies to Seema Verma’s tweets.

Dr. Ronald Hirsch asked the question that I’m sure many doctors were asking:

The short answer is no MACRA and MIPS aren’t going away. If my understanding of policy is right, Seema Verma doesn’t have the authority to make MACRA go away. That would take actions from Congress and I don’t know anyone holding their breath on that one. However, Seema can streamline the way MACRA and MIPS are implemented to make it much easier for doctors. That seems to be what’s happening now.

What will this mean for the future of MACRA? I don’t think anyone knows the answers to that question. However, what does seem clear from these tweets is that change is in the air. We’ll have to wait and see what those changes are and who influences the changes they make.

What do you think this means for MACRA and MIPS? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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

  • No, they aren’t cancelling measures as they want their money back from the big time $$ the government shelled out for EMR implementation in the first place. Of course if you follow Eliyahu Goldratt and the Theory of Constraints you’ll know that if you tell me how you measure me, I will tell you how I behave. Is it any real surprise that doctors are more data entry clerks than they are doctors?
    Enough of this idiocy then. The resolution is to have the measurers aggregate the data and not have the doctors choose what to report from a list. Then have the insurers put out of the picture, entirely, and go to a DPC model that makes doctors into medical practitioners again. Then weed out the GREED.

    Anyone want to brainstorm voice to text models with blockchain engines for EMR?

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