There were only 160 hospitals nationwide that participated in the CMS voluntary hybrid readmission measure pilot and Memorial Health Care Systems was one of them. Taunya Schlueter is a clinical analyst at Memorial Health and was instrumental in implementing the hybrid measure pilot program for her hospital. Today she shares with us what that process looked like and why it was important for her hospital to participate.

Ahh Thanksgiving. What a great holiday. A day to be full of gratefulness, love and too much stuffing.

This week we are taking a break from our usual education to bring you something fun. A personality quiz! A healthcare quality reporting personality quiz to be exact.

This scripted conversation between a quality analyst and a director of quality management might not be real, but one thing’s for sure: You’ll need to get to know CMS’ new hybrid readmission measure sooner than you think.

Guess what? You might actually be able to make some real money in the MIPS program next year. That's because CMS is upping the minimum and exceptional scores so more of the worst performer’s money will feed the best performers.

CMS released the 2020 Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) final rule which contained the revised MIPS requirements. Next year CMS is upping the minimum score requirements and plan to post your 2018 MIPS performance to Physician Compare. Also, of note, CMS has released its vision for how their new MIPS Value Pathways (MVP) program may look in 2021. I’ve summarized the gist of the program below the slideshow.

It’s the 20^th anniversary of the IOM’s landmark report, “To Err is Human,” which sparked the modern patient safety movement. Since then, some health systems’ relationships with patient safety have gone stale. Our advice columnist helps reignite one reader’s passion for patient safety using quality data.

Every year, CMS levies penalties nationwide on hospitals with poor readmission performance. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2020, 83% of hospitals will be hit with a penalty.

Since the program began in FY 2012, CMS has steadily been doling out penalties to hospital’s with poor readmission performance and increasing the maximum amount of penalty applied. This year, 3,129 hospitals are eligible for the program and the maximum penalty a hospital could receive is 3%.

Is your hospital ready for hospital quality reporting next year? Yes, I said next year! I know it may sound a little early, but when it comes to successfully fulfilling regulatory reporting requirements, it’s never too soon to start preparing.

Results from the second year of MIPS

2018 marked the second complete year of the MIPS program. Last year, we put together an infographic showing our clients’ performance in the first year of MIPS. This year we took it a step further and included even more data points for comparison.

I recently received an email from a client asking me which Quality conferences I felt were worth attending. Medisolv of course makes our rounds at Quality conferences every year, but I hadn’t thought about it from a Quality person’s perspective. So, I went around internally here at Medisolv and rounded up what we thought is worth the investment to attend.

It should go without saying, but this list is just based off our opinion. Also, no one is paying us to promote any of these conferences listed here. Unless of course you’re interested… 😉