By Jim Tate, EMR Advocate
MACRA/MIPS Subject Matter Expert
Twitter: @JimTate, eMail: jimtate@emradvocate.com
“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it”. I’m pretty sure Mark Twain said that. We might as well say “Everybody talks about MIPS, but nobody does anything about it”. Well, hardly anybody. I hear lots of MIPS discussion about avoiding penalties, taking the easy path, and minimizing impact. Not too much actual action is taking place. What kind of action am I talking about? How about embracing the complexities of MIPS and developing a strategic action plan?
The MIPS race has begun and there will be winners and losers but that is all theoretical now. It is not often we can look ahead and accurately predict when something will happen. With MIPS it is not too hard to know when the first real hammer will fall. You can expect it in about a year when the 2017 MIPS Composite Scores will become public. I can already hear the “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. “No one told me that if I picked the “test” transition option in 2017 I would have a public score of 3.” I expect a massive outcry of “not fair” from many of the associations that now are sending Eligible Clinicians down this particular path. There are a few voices crying in the wilderness but most of it is falling on deaf ears. Those with ears to hear will be rewarded in the fall of 2018 when those scores hit the web and impact professional reputation, reimbursement, practice value, and provider compensation.
We began with a Mark Twain quote and we end with a quote from Bob Dylan. “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”. What else is there to say?
This article was originally published on MIPS Consulting Blog and is republished here with permission.