Physicians are quite honestly all over the place on the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), the legislation that permanently repealed the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula that for years threatened to cut physician payments by about 20 percent, requiring annual congressional patches.Congress needed to pay for…

Before I get into detail on this topic, let me establish a baseline understanding. Whether it be the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) and value-based programs; the Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) measures, used to measure performance on important dimensions of care and service; or even…

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is part one in a three-part series on outpatient clinical documentation integrity.There is a great push within the healthcare industry to move clinical documentation integrity (CDI) into the outpatient arena. People refer to this as “outpatient CDI,” but I think this is a misnomer. If you…

Las Vegas is best known for its casinos, crowds, and Celine Dion. But now the city can also be recognized for coding and clinical documentation improvement (CDI). Why?The American Association of Professional Coders (AAPC) and HCPro’s Association of Clinical Documentation Improvement Specialists (ACDIS) both convened in Las Vegas during the…

Every two years, one of the most interesting perspectives on medicine in America is published by the Physicians Foundation via its biennial physician survey.In the 2016 survey, 17,236 physicians responded to a wide variety of questions about their practice, the state of the healthcare industry, and perspectives on specific topics,…