Part B Insider (Multispecialty) Coding Alert

This April, the ONC, in coordination with the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), compiled a report for Congress to study the advantages of “creating an EHR comparison tool” to make selecting the right EHR for your practice easier and more efficient.

They identified three areas of improvement and four main criteria for aiding physicians and practices, but also, maintained that other factors like practice size, specialty, location, and goals would factor into the decision about which EHR and products to implement.

After much consideration and surveying, they deduced that providers weren’t making “informed decisions” about their practice IT products and that there was not enough information for them to do this. In addition, the study concluded that the marketplace was lax in offering comparisons between products for users.

The ONC address these discrepancies with the four ideas below, and plan to move forward on providing tools for providers to assess EHRs and other medical technologies more thoroughly:

• “Provide targeted technical assistance”
• “Improve awareness of comparison tool marketplace”
• “Collect and share information about certified health IT”
• “Collaborate with stakeholders and comparison tool developers”

Resource: For a closer look at the study, visit www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/macraehrpct_final_4-2016.pdf.

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