News: Verma reiterates regulatory reduction, E/M reforms at AHA event

At the 2018 American Hospital Association (AHA) Annual Membership Meeting on Monday, May 7, CMS administrator Seema Verma focused on the agency’s efforts to reduce regulatory burdens and continued move from a fee-for-service to value-based system, JustCoding reported.

CMS is looking at ways to eliminate redundancies and regulatory burdens that take away from patient care, according to Verma. In line with this initiative, the agency updated the Medicare Claims Processing Manual Chapter 12, Section 100.1.1 on E/M documentation to allow notes written by medical students to count for medical billing purposes, so long as the teaching physician reviews and signs the note.

CMS also launched the Meaningful Measures initiative, intended to rethink and remove quality measures the agency deems no longer relevant. In the 2019 IPPS proposed rule, for example, CMS proposed eliminating a significant number of measures that acute care hospitals are required to report across value-based purchasing programs.

According to Verma, the Meaningful Measures initiative will affect providers across all types of facilities but will have a slow and gradual impact, JustCoding reported. “We can’t do everything at once, nor do we necessarily have the infrastructure in many areas for claims-based or registry-based reporting, requiring providers to report measures manually,” she said.

Another priority for CMS, according to Verma, is increasing price transparency. In March, along with the White House Office of Innovation, CMS launched the MyHealthEData initiative, proposing that hospitals give patients access to their health records, according to JustCoding.

According to Verma, these changes will reduce the likeliness of medical record errors and improve the quality of care provided. “Imagine a world in which every treatment your doctor gives you is informed by data from similar patients from all over the world, reducing medical errors and increasing the effectiveness of treating whatever condition you have,” she said.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in JustCoding. For more information regarding the AHA Annual Membership Meeting and Verma’s remarks, visit the AHA website.