It will all be worth it...

[Sheherezade]

Ahh.... that makes sense, HoW. I figured a lot of this doesn't filter down to employed docs and with a 5% requirement, I'm sure it wouldn't. That is easy to hit in a huge institution....particularly when you self insure all your staff. We are on MyChart as patients helping towards that 5%.

[Vanquisher]

Yes. If over 5% of your patients don't get on their patient portal, the docs lose a percentage of their Medicare reimbursements.

The requirements are endless and are often hard to apply to certain specialties.

[HouseofWool]

Why would patients signing up for online accounts make a difference? I always figured that the patient portals and on line access were for the patien's convenience and I've never signed on for it. Does that mean my providers get penalized?

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk 4

That's my question. I've not really figured out WHY we are penalized for patient behavior that is unrelated to care.

And yes, it they do not achieve 5% enrollment AND USE each quarter they will be penalized up to 2% of Medicare payments in 2015. The best part, is that it is 5% of all patients, not just Medicare patients.

[Sheherezade]

This is one of the reasons that DH went employed. It's nice to have someone else worrying about all these new requirements. Lack of control, yes. But not all the stress of figuring this all out!

[HouseofWool]

Can I just reiterate the depth of my hated of insurance companies?

[MrsK]

Why would medicaid care if your patients use the Internet? I prefer not to communicate with medical providers on line. I'd think that people treating a large volume of elderly people, like my husband in geriatric psych, or poor people, like my brother in rural family practice, would never have 5%.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk 4

[Vanquisher]

You ask questions as if the answers are supposed to make sense.

IMO, it's all hoops and tape designed to make it so docs get paid less.

[MrsK]

That's my question. I've not really figured out WHY we are penalized for patient behavior that is unrelated to care.

And yes, it they do not achieve 5% enrollment AND USE each quarter they will be penalized up to 2% of Medicare payments in 2015. The best part, is that it is 5% of all patients, not just Medicare patients.

This is my point. And I doubt I'd use an online portal quarterly if I was seeing the provider annually or less.



Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk 4

[HouseofWool]

My favorite part is that we are required to send communications to our patients whom we have seen in the last 2 years.

Never mind that the majority of those patients are PRN after a fracture and we have no legitimate reason to ever contact them again.

[WolfpackWife]

Probably unanswerable but who, exactly, are the deciding parties that any of that makes an iota of sense? Do law/policy makers just never seek out input from physicians and staff when deciding?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Vanquisher]

Probably unanswerable but who, exactly, are the deciding parties that any of that makes an iota of sense? Do law/policy makers just never seek out input from physicians and staff when deciding?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ding, ding, ding! The decisions for the direction of medicine, as I see it, are made by politicians, insurance lobby, and MBAs. Definitely not physicians.

[BonBon]

This is one of the multitude of reasons why I so strongly dislike our government.

What about inpatient vs observation? Inpatient = stay through two midnights. Observation < 2 midnights, but pay is TEN PERCENT of inpatient. (as in NINETY PERCENT LESS) Doesn't matter level of care.

The amount of bullshit that is come up with to deny or reduce payments is astounding. I'm talking Medicare here, not even private insurers.

[Deebs]

And now that we've totally hijacked this thread - this is all why I won't return to healthcare administration. It was only a decade ago that we were actually allowed to work on quality assurance/quality improvement that had some hope of....improving quality. I honestly don't believe that exists anymore.

Once a month or so, DH gets fed up with Obs rules, or some other qualifier that keeps a patient from being admitted, bucks the system, yells at some administrator, tells that person to fire him if he's so wrong, and probably costs his hospital the cost of the stay. It's okay - he charts very well and makes them plenty of money. BUT, he can't do that every shift - he just can't. They actually would then fire him.
And this is the part of medicine that makes it "not worth it," but he still feels like it is, most days.

[Sheherezade]

ITA Deebs. FWIW, we don't experience these shifts as acutely with the new job at the enormous healthcare provider as we did before at the just-big healthcare provider. I wonder if scale makes it easier to adjust or if they are just a little further along on the adjustment scale.



Angie