That ’s it: MACRA must die!

The Trump administration has made clear its intentions to drastically reduce the size and intrusive nature of government. Let’s hope that extends to the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, otherwise known as MACRA, the heavy-handed new government “value-based payment” program for medical care, enacted in 2015, and set to rear its ugly head beginning this year. MACRA must die. MACRA is administrative overkill in an industry already overburdened by such things. And it makes little sense and will make little difference in our current dysfunctional health care environment. For physicians, MACRA in practice is the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) a performance rating scale comprised of four categories: quality Measures, advancing care information, performance improvement activities, and cost. A physician’s annual MIPS score will be compared to the scores of other physicians to determine future Medicare pay increases or penalties. It is a system that only the most ardent bureaucrat could love, or would think effective. To satisfy the MIPS Quality Measures Rating, physicians must report data on six different measures. But the measures can be problematic for a number of reasons. One measure is “Diabetes: Hemoglobin A1c Poor Control (>9 percent),” which is the “percentage of patients 18-75 years of age with diabetes who had hemoglobin A1c > 9.0%.” This is a seemingly simple measure that assesses a physician’s performance on the most basic a...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Policy Medicare Source Type: blogs