MACRA Measures & Insights from Health Catalyst Helps Healthcare Organizations Solve the MACRA Reporting Puzzle

Related Survey: Just One-Third of Health Systems Say Physicians are Ready for MACRA; Biggest Headache is Capturing Compliance Measures

News provided by

Health Catalyst

Feb 15, 2017, 07:01 ET

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Physicians have long complained about the growing burden of government regulation, especially its effect of reducing time spent with patients. A 2016 study by Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College and the Medical Group Management Association found that physicians and their staff spend between 6 and 12 hours per week processing and reporting quality metrics to the government – at a cost of $15.4 billion a year.

MACRA Measures & Insights by Health Catalyst is an opportunity analysis application which allows organizations to measure their historical performance against MACRA-MIPS measures leading to more meaningful decisions around risk and outcomes. Analyze groups, specialties and providers to determine potential performance on quality measures for any payer. Provides the ability to compare measures across payers to better align the organization strategically.

As a recent Health Catalyst/Peer60 survey confirms, that burden is expected to significantly worsen in 2017 and beyond as physicians struggle to report quality metrics for the Medicare Access & CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) – the federal law that changes the way Medicare pays doctors. Commercial health insurers are expected to follow the government's lead with similar programs of their own. Passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress, MACRA requires physicians who participate in its financial incentives to report on a subset of 271 quality measures. In complex organizations, successfully achieving performance targets and submitting accurately for MACRA incentives will require integrating multiple measures across financial, regulatory and quality departments.

To help identify and align healthcare organizations' selection of the MACRA quality measures, Health Catalyst® today announced the release of MACRA Measures & Insights™. Built on an industry-leading data and analytics platform integrating over 120 data sources including claims and all major EMRs, the new application helps healthcare organizations track and monitor all MACRA measures across multiple departments. Moreover, with MACRA Measures & Insights, organizations for the first time can quickly spot areas where their physicians are performing best, and therefor which quality measures to report to Medicare to maximize payment under MACRA.

"Healthcare organizations expend significant human resources to compile, interpret, keep up with and understand the impact of regulatory compliance measures, and this problem will only get worse under MACRA," said Dale Sanders, Executive Vice President of Development for Health Catalyst. "MACRA Measures & Insights will significantly reduce that burden while making it easier to maximize Medicare reimbursement and to monitor performance against measures year over year."

Dorian DiNardo, PMP, Health Catalyst Vice President and Product Line Manager for Operations and Performance Management, added, "The nice thing about the Health Catalyst platform is, it contains virtually all of the granular data in a healthcare system, including claims and other external data, so we can quickly combine that data to support effectively any reporting or analytics requirement, including MACRA and any changes that might come along in the future."

Identify Measures to Optimize At-Risk Contracting
More than assisting with regulatory compliance, MACRA Measures & Insights also enables healthcare provider organizations to tactically and strategically identify the optimal measures to include within multi-year value-based care contracts with commercial payers. By aligning contractual success measures with an organization's strongest areas of performance, the application helps to maximize payments in risk-based contracts. MACRA Measures & Insights also enables organizations to easily add measures from multiple payers' contracts.

Conversely, health plans can use the application to identify populations of patients that are appropriate for sharing risk with their provider partners.

Survey: compiling quality measures is health systems' biggest MACRA worry
The heavy lifting required to track and compile MACRA measures for reporting to Medicare is top of mind for healthcare executives, according to a Health Catalyst/Peer60 survey conducted in late 2016. When asked which MACRA-related activities "pose the greatest difficulties for healthcare organizations," 74 out of the 187 respondents (40%) ranked "compiling metrics for regulatory reporting" as the biggest challenge. The next biggest headache identified by survey respondents (18%) was "adjusting to greater coordination between providers and patients."

Only about a third of healthcare organizations were prepared to tackle MACRA's reporting challenges as of late last year, according to the survey. Just 35 percent of respondents answered affirmatively when asked whether they "have a strategy and are well on [their] way to being ready" for upcoming MACRA reporting. Ready or not, most do expect to participate in the program, with only 5 percent of those surveyed planning to opt out of MACRA entirely.

The online survey reflects the opinions of 187 U.S. healthcare executives and senior leaders who work at organizations ranging from the nation's largest urban academic medical centers and integrated delivery networks to critical access hospitals and large physician groups.

Deeper dive into MACRA Measures & Insights
Powered by the Health Catalyst Analytics Platform™, MACRA Measures & Insights enables organizations to gain deep insight into performance measures at virtually any degree of detail required for measurement and performance improvement.

The application delivers a variety of filtering views to drill down quickly into multiple dimensions for quick decision making at the level of:

Specialty
Group
Individual provider
Domain
Individual measure
Diagnosis group
Data quality
Several additional dimensions, such as payer or contract

MACRA Measures & Insights also reveals performance scores in three initial MIPS performance quadrants, with more to come:

Quality
Clinical practice improvement activities (if scores available)
Advancing care information (if scores available)

The application includes measure calculations validated to be using the correct data (per CMS guidelines) to meet MACRA requirements. It also displays benchmarks for easy comparison. An alignment tab compares quality measures already at-risk with other payers to the MACRA measures, helping to prioritize those best suited for risk in the Quality Payment Program.

Explore MACRA Measures & Insights in Live Webinar, Feb. 16
For a detailed look at the new application, join the Health Catalyst product development team for a live MACRA Measures & Insights Product Webinar on Thursday, February 16, 2017, 1:00-2:30 p.m. EST. Attendees will be able to view a live demo of the application and participate in a live question and answer session. Register for the webinar here.

MACRA Measures & Insights Data Sheet
Take a deeper dive into the solution by downloading the product data sheet here.

Demo MACRA Measures & Insights at HIMSS17 in Orlando
Health Catalyst will demonstrate MACRA Measures & Insights at the 2017 HIMSS Conference & Exhibition in Orlando, Feb. 20-23. Visit booth #5173 or schedule a meeting to ensure the right people are available to meet with you.

About Health Catalyst
Health Catalyst is a next-generation data, analytics, and decision support company committed to being a catalyst for massive, sustained improvements in healthcare outcomes. We are the leaders in a new era of advanced predictive analytics for population health and value-based care with a suite of machine learning-driven solutions, decades of outcomes-improvement expertise, and an unparalleled ability to integrate data from across the healthcare ecosystem. Our proven data warehousing and analytics platform helps improve quality, add efficiency and lower costs in support of more than 85 million patients for organizations ranging from the largest US health system to forward-thinking physician practices. Our technology and professional services can help you keep patients engaged and healthy in their homes and workplaces, and we can help you optimize care delivery to those patients when it becomes necessary. We are grateful to be recognized by Fortune, Gallup, Glassdoor, Modern Healthcare and a host of others as a Best Place to Work in technology and healthcare. Visit www.healthcatalyst.com, and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Media Contact:
Todd Stein
Amendola Communications
916-346-4213
[email protected]

SOURCE Health Catalyst