By Kim Hathaway, MSN, CPHRM, Healthcare Quality and Risk Consultant, The Doctors Company

As the end of the third quarter of 2017 approaches, practices that have not yet developed their Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) plan face great urgency to complete their plan—and those who have started may be feeling overwhelmed. Regardless of the reporting stage, these steps can help guide practices to succeed:

1. Review past performance in quality measures such as the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) or specialty measures that your practice has reported. These are strong indicators of how your practice will do in the future. Align activities and quality measures with what you are already doing in your practice and determine how to make capturing the needed data part of your team's workflow. Ask for input from the frontline of your practice about the most efficient ways to collect the necessary data elements.
2. Study the specifications for measures you are reporting to better understand its value. For claims or registry reporting, go to Quality Payment Program website and choose the appropriate file under "Documents and Downloads." If you are reporting through your electronic health record (EHR), the vendor can be very helpful in choosing your measures.
3. Monitor your data on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Compare the reports that you run in your office to those generated by your EHR or registry. Investigate any discrepancy so that it can be corrected now by coaching the team on documentation or timeliness of reporting.
4. Understand that the scoring process for the quality measures is very different than it was in PQRS. Under PQRS, if you reported the measure enough times, you received credit. And if you reported on one patient, you would get a pass. Under MIPS it is your performance rate that will be most important. On top of the change in how much you report versus the performance rate, the scores will be determined based on national benchmarks, with the highest performing deciles receiving a greater point value.
5. Review the Quality Resource Utilization Report (QRUR) to fully understand how the practice performs in quality and cost. Use the 2015 or 2016 QRUR (publishing fall 2017) to identify potential weaknesses and address them before cost returns as a scored category in 2019—because cost will carry a weight of 30 percent toward the MIPS composite score. There are no reporting requirements for the cost category in 2017. CMS will provide feedback on cost for the 2017 performance period, but it will not be counted in the final composite score for 2017 or 2018.

For help with interpreting the information on your QRUR, consult the CMS website regarding QRUR analysis and payment. You will find additional resources and links to the EIDM System and what to do if you believe your QRUR is not accurate.