As winter approaches, savvy owners and managers of medical practices are already looking ahead to 2017 with an eye toward seeing what regulations, financial incentives, and other factors will affect their bottom line.

Big changes are coming to how we provide healthcare services in the United States. In a bid to improve efficiencies and treat more patients more quickly with less waste, we are going to be transitioning from the older model based on fees for services to a new one that is dedicated more to value-based reimbursements.

Anyone who has endured spending too much time in a crowded waiting room waiting for a doctor can appreciate the benefits of an early and much-missed aspect of our healthcare system: the humble house call. And if you’ve ever felt so sick that you would much more prefer having a doctor see you at home than endure spending even a minute in a waiting room with other coughing individuals, a house call would be ideal. It helps conserve your strength as well as keep you from infecting others in public.

Telemedicine Program Reinventing Traditional Medicine With Twenty-first Century Technology If your organization is considering implementing a telemedicine program but you currently have limited experience with telehealth systems, it’s prudent to become familiar with industry best practices before you begin.

The following excerpt is from an article found on www.healthitoutcomes.com. It was written by Christine Kern. -------------------------- Population health initiatives are growing in number and popularity across the nation as one way to reduce overall healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes. Recently, PwC's Health Research Institute (HRI) released Population health: Scaling up in which they interviewed executives in leading healthcare, research and academic institutions on how organizations can better scale their efforts.

Since the passing of MACRA, the Medicare Access & CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, healthcare providers who treat Medicare patients will be making changes in how they report on the level of quality they provide. New information about the impending changes came from the Department of Health and Human Services this year. The Department of HHS released its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in April of this year in an effort to begin implementing MACRA. It’s a bid to overhaul and modernize the way healthcare providers report information necessary before getting paid. With a goal to reduce the burden of healthcare costs on American taxpayers, MACRA is designed to help providers report data on the quality of services. With that in mind, here are five important things every physician needs to know about MACRA, which will begin implementation in 2019.

Since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (under the auspices of the U.S. government’s Department of Health and Human Services) began paying separately for chronic care management services under a new Current Procedural Terminology or CPT code, many healthcare organizations have questions about the nature of CCM. Medicare has been making payments to reimburse providers for CCM service using CPT code 99490 only since January 1, 2015, so it’s natural for healthcare professionals to have questions still. Now it’s time to learn more about chronic care management.

The pressure to contain costs in the nation’s health care system is mounting. One area where the government is keenly interested in making changes is to promote the quality of care rather than the sheer volume of care being provided. To that end, there is a move to streamline the methods healthcare organizations use to report the level of quality they deliver to each patient. Of particular note is the fact that the Department of Health and Human Services is making changes in how Medicare payments will be paid for in connection with the quality and costs of the services. Modernizing how Medicare will pay doctors for quality is designed to save taxpayers money and help the entire system run more efficiently. In order to get up to speed on the legislative efforts involved, you’ll need to become familiar with the terms MACRA, MIPS and APM.

It often seems that people are far busier today than they were in recent years, and this is reflected in part by their growing use of smartphones while on the go. Trying to stay constantly connected with friends, family and coworkers with a portable device that you keep with you at all times for research as well as entertainment can make for some frazzled nerves and increased frustration. It’s no wonder that patients may seem less engaged when they come to your medical organization, with so many distractions pulling at them and fighting for their attention. Getting them more involved in healthcare discussions and their treatment plans should be of paramount importance. It’s clear that now is the time for you to prioritize patient engagement.

The more efficient healthcare providers become in the services they provide, especially to patients who are covered through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the more resources we will have at our disposal. To that end, CMS recently released some tips to help eligible professionals, hospitals and critical care hospitals as they attest to meaningful use this year. If you don’t comply with the meaningful use criteria, your organization won’t be eligible to get the financial incentives offered by the government for CMS patients. It’s in your best interest to do your part, so here are four tips for successful meaningful use attestation.