Healthcare: a Pain in the Wallet      

   Yesterday we covered two of the four categories that soon will require Medicare physician compliance. The second, going electronic, means massive investments in hardware, software, backup systems and IT staff. A Health Affairs study in 2011 estimated the first-year cost for a five-doctor group to go electronic was $247,500.

Category Three: Clinical Practice Improvement Activities. Doctors must choose four areas, and attest that they have done them for at least 90 days each. The problem is not the goals, but what is required to prove that doctors have reached them. 

   Many activities involve "qualified clinical data registries," "action plans," "implementation of improvements" and other time-consuming distractions from clinical work. 

Category Four: Reporting how much each doctor costs Medicare. How ironic. MACRA cost controls apply only to the practice of medicine.

   Medicare will not reduce what vendors can charge, or what clinical data registries receive for their services. 

   Can anything be done? The Health and Human Services secretary said in June, "We've turned a lot of folks in healthcare professions into data entry clerks."

   He proposed changes to MACRA, giving more doctors an exemption from MIPS rules, and relaxing other rules. 

                                           Charles Horton, WORLD magazine

   And who is the HHS secretary? Oh, that's Tom Price, now out of the game after using private planes for government business.

   Figures.

          Jimmy