Through AANS and CNS, neurosurgery has been at the forefront of discussions with CMS on the best way to implement payment and quality reform measures that include PQRS. They are advocating on behalf of neurosurgeons in order to ensure their ability to provide timely, compassionate, high quality and state of the art treatment for patients in need of neurosurgical care.
These discussions are vital and while they continue, it’s important to be aware of deadlines looming overhead that, if missed, could impact your physician medical billing and the financial health of your medical practice billing, coding and collections.
Oct. 15, 2013 is the deadline to register for the CMS Physician Value-PQRS (PV-PQRS) Registration System. It’s a new application to serve the Physician Value Modifier and PQRS programs that, according to CMS, will allow:
- Physician group practices to select their CY 2013 PQRS Group Reporting Mechanism and, if the group has 100 or more eligible professionals, elect quality tiering to calculate their CY 2015 Value-based Payment Modifier
- Individual eligible professionals to select the CMS-calculated Administrative Claims reporting mechanism for CY 2013 in order to avoid the PQRS negative payment
[space height=”10″]
2013 is the first year that non-participation in PQRS will result in penalties causing reduced payments. Driven by your healthcare revenue cycle management, your neurosurgery practice performance in 2013 will dictate whether you’re penalized and if your payment is reduced beginning in 2015. While PQRS participation is voluntary, meeting the requirements not only optimizes your revenue stream it also demonstrates the quality care you provide. It all begins with registering and finding the right quality measure to report.
While bonuses of 0.5% will be awarded through 2014, they are being replaced in 2015 with penalties for non-compliance. These penalties are scheduled to rise to 2% of total individual physician Medicare payments in 2016.
Whether your neurosurgery practice reports as a group or individually and depending on size, at least one measure (if under 10) or more PQRS measures will need to be reported. Those who choose to participate individually must report on individual PQRS quality measures or measures groups through Medicare Part B claims, a qualified Physician Quality Reporting registry, or a qualified electronic health record. Those who choose to participate as a group can only report individual measures using a CMS-qualified PQRS registry or for groups of 25 plus eligible professionals through a web interface.
But which measure(s) is best for your medical revenue cycle management? Your practice may be more vulnerable with all of these new PQRS developments, unless you have an independent, third party expert in neurosurgery coding compliance that includes PQRS. They help to select the reporting measure best for your practice. revMD.com stays current on federal guidelines and changes in neurosurgery quality reporting measures and all other compliance areas. They protect your neurosurgery coding, billing and collections from reduced payments that will result from incomplete data reporting, whether you are a practice of 2, 20 or 200.
revMD.com is the results-proven alternative for healthcare revenue cycle management, with a niche specialization in neurosurgery medical coding and billing that generates unprecedented results and builds profitable medical practices. Not only is revMD.com the industry expert in physician coding, billing and collections, they are the professionals in PQRS compliance and seamless ICD-10 implementation. Leveraging a history of industry wide success spanning 26 years, revMD.com partners with medical practices throughout the U.S. to optimize revenue for hospital based and practice based physicians. For more information, visit www.revmd.com.