You’ll likely have an easier time avoiding the 3% meaningful use penalty in 2017 with the passage of the Patient Access and Medicare Protection Act (S.2425) — but eligible professionals (EPs) must sit tight until CMS releases the precise details of the anticipated reprieve.

If your practice is interested in a coordinated-care model but not ready for the heavy lift of creating an accountable care organization (ACO), you now have a new option.

Use a registry or your own electronic health records (EHR) system before you give up on beating the 2% quality performance pay cut. Practices that are willing to put in the effort — and the money — may be able to use a registry to meet the 2015 reporting requirements.

Question: Is a high level of medical decision-making (MDM) a necessary element in a high-level established patient E/M code (99214-99215)?

Question: What sort of payment reductions can a practice expect if the providers don’t have electronic health records (EHR) and have not participated in any of the quality initiative programs such as e-prescribing (e-Rx) and the physician quality reporting system (PQRS)?

CMS is reporting a surge in denials on clinical lab claims in 2015.

CMS beat its Jan. 14 deadline for issuing an updated relative value file for the 2016 Medicare physician fee schedule, but DecisionHealth, the publisher of Part B News, has unearthed one surprise in the new data — the conversion factor for your 2016 services will drop a little more than 2 cents.

Start with a review of the measure specification release notes as you gear up for another year of quality reporting. You need to know about revisions to measures providers reported in the past to make sure you don’t incur quality reporting and the value-based modifier penalties for 2016 data.