Although many of us have successfully made it to the new year and are going fine with our new year resolutions, but clinicians participating in the PQRS (Physician Quality Reporting System) and VM (Value-Based Payment Modifier) 2016 programs are finding 2017 a bit hard to keep up with.

The conclusion of the reporting period welcomes the important data submission period. Based on provider’s elected reporting method, the reporting period extends through the end of February or March.

The data submitted through CMS’ VM and PQRS program will be used to adjust Medicare Part B payments and will be paying providers established on how well they treat their patients. In order to accomplish this, CMS is leveraging national benchmarks that are generated from PQRS 2015 data to fix the tone for what establishes a provider’s low, average, or high-quality performance.

In theory, this could be a great thing. What could be better than utilizing the recent quality data to create a healthy competition among clinicians with the prize of an incentive payment for delivering high-quality healthcare? What allows providers and physician groups to set attainable improvement goals and define quality improvement goals is giving their current performance insight in a timely manner.

Since the reporting period is over now, it’s too late for clinicians to struggle for improvements in quality performance. Its data submission time for providers now and they should be focussing on improving quality under the latest CMS program, QPP

So far so good, but here is the catch. Can we really ask providers to move on to the new MIPS program when they just can’t feel confident about whether their submitted data places them in a good position to secure their financial interests and at the same time demonstrating a high quality of healthcare?

That’s the question of the year. Many healthcare experts and analysts are saying that CMS cannot release performance benchmarks after performance periods have ended. Granted that CMS did release Quality Performance Program benchmarks on December 29, but it was still too late for providers to make any substantial course corrections on their performance.

We at EMRSystems, are addressing these issues in our MIPS Resource Centre. We are developing whitepapers and scheduling webinars for clinicians to stay abreast of the latest trends and are also providing them with suitable EHR that can ease the transition for them. We’ve already helped many providers pick quality measures that have a greater chance of meeting the immediate requirements and we will continue to benefit them in other ways as well. If you are a healthcare provider still struggling with the new rules, it’s not too late to subscribe with us and gain all the help you need.