OBERD MIPS Strategic Recommendation: Pursue a Reimbursement
03/19/18
Last month, we discussed the challenge of achieving a positive MIPS reimbursement adjustment. This week and next, we’ll discuss two fundamentally different approaches to defining success under MIPS (and to achieving that success).
The first approach focuses on achieving a reimbursement under MIPS. The second will cover strategies to avoid a negative adjustment, collect relevant quality data for orthopaedics, and incur minimal workflow disruption.
For the purposes of this two-part series, we will focus on MIPS Quality and CPIA. Recall, for performance year 2018, quality makes up 50% of the composite performance score (CPS) and CPIA constitutes 15%.
First, the good news: OBERD is a CMS-certified QCDR whose primary function is collecting patient-reported outcomes (PROs) data for orthopaedics. Collecting MIPS quality data is an ancillary function of the platform. However, because our clients collect PROs using OBERD and because OBERD is a QCDR, we can satisfy the entirety of the CPIA component, guaranteeing clients will avoid a negative MIPS adjustment.
Strategic Recommendation: Achieving Reimbursement: Pursue high a performance rate in cross-cutting quality measures.
Measures such as influenza, tobacco use and alcohol use may or may not impact orthopaedic care but they carry high deciles. High compliance collecting these measures is a valid path towards reimbursement.
How OBERD Clients Utilize This Strategy: By using OBERD’s proprietary, short electronic quality form. It is a single electronic form that clients deploy to all patients to collect 9 cross-cutting quality measures. It is dynamic, serving patient education for tobacco use, for example, when a patient identifies as a tobacco user.
Measures included:
- 155 - Falls: Plan of Care
- 318 - Falls: Screening for Future Fall Risk
- 111 - Pneumococcal Vaccination Status for Older Adults
- 128 - Preventive Care and Screening: Body Mass Index (BMI) Screening and Follow-Up Plan
- 110 - Preventive Care and Screening: Influenza Immunization
- 226 - Preventive Care and Screening: Tobacco Use: Screening and Cessation Intervention
- 431 - Preventive Care and Screening: Unhealthy Alcohol Use: Screening & Brief Counseling
- 402 - Tobacco Use and Help with Quitting Among Adolescents
To be eligible for reimbursement, a provider or institution must achieve a high rate of compliance. For some measures with high deciles a > 99% performance rate is necessary.
Reimbursement Strategy Under OBERD:
Pros:
- Contention for achieving high compliance
- Automated deployment of a single, short quality measure form
- Educational requirement satisfied with dynamic education content served to patient from within the form
- Establish benchmarking data
- Submit to CMS using a QCDR
Cons:
- Extremely high compliance required
- Data collected may be less relevant to orthopaedic providers and practices
- Workflow disruption: clients must devote staff time to achieving high compliance
If you and your orthopaedic practice or institution want to pursue a reimbursement under MIPS, take measures to maximize compliance while collecting cross-cutting quality measures via electronic, patient-reported modes.
Follow-up with us in a week for our next post: strategies to avoid a negative adjustment, collect relevant quality data for orthopaedics, and incur minimal workflow disruption.
To learn more about our MIPS reporting tool, click here.
