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MACRA rule may help ophthalmologists avoid penalties
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CHICAGO — The recently finalized MACRA rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services may help ophthalmologists avoid penalties by shifting physician payments from a volume based payment program to a value based payment program, according to speakers here.
“MACRA has established, really, an entirely new payment policy for physicians. They’re calling it a quality payment program. In a nutshell, they’re paying for value rather than volume...The final rule has been pretty encouraging in terms of what we believe is the ability for most of our members to avoid the penalties and perhaps achieve some of the bonuses in the program,” David G. Glasser, MD, associate secretary, American Academy of Ophthalmology Health Policy Committee, said at a press briefing at the American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting.
David G. Glasser
The new system, which was finalized on Friday, Oct. 14, will evaluate physicians on resource use, quality reporting, electronic health care usage and clinical practice improvement technologies. Ophthalmologists who are registered for and use AAO’s Intelligent Research in Sight (IRIS) registry may find they can avoid any penalties through the new system and could possibly be qualified to receive bonuses, David W. Parke II, MD, CEO of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, said at the briefing.
Ophthalmologists who use the IRIS registry can feed into the Merit-based Incentive Payment System’s (MIPS) quality reporting portion, clinical practice improvement portion and earn bonus points for the EHR (electronic health records) advancing care information portion through their participation in the registry, Parke said.
David Parke II
“The IRIS Registry, and the benefits received from participation in this, should make a lot of ophthalmologist potentially be in the pool for a bonus, maybe a small bonus, but a bonus nonetheless,” Parke said. – by Robert Linnehan
Disclosure: Parke reports he is the CEO of AAO and Glasser reports he is the associate secretary of AAO’s Health Policy Committee.