Few, if any, health care payment and delivery initiatives underway promise to have as much impact on the nation’s shift from volume to value-based reimbursements, holistic clinical delivery, and overall system sustainability as the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA).

By establishing distinct and relatively complex delivery and payment tracks – the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and Alternative Payment Models (APMs) – programmatic vigilance and collaboration is needed by all healthcare stakeholders.

And with current and future healthcare information technology solutions a critical part of the equation – building upon similar public and private payer programs such as patient-centered medical home (PCMH) and accountable care organization (ACO) structures – the Electronic Health Record Association (EHRA) submitted detailed comments November 17 to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in response to the agency’s MACRA request for information (RFI).

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In October, we provided comments to ONC on its April 2015 “Report on Health Information Blocking”, in the spirit of collaborating to establish an environment where the right data can flow to the right party at the right time using a set of agreed-upon standards.  While some press coverage characterized our comments as negative (“…Prove It”), we in fact attempted to provide balanced feedback, recognizing that the first challenge is to come up with a definition of “information blocking” that everyone agrees on.

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Leigh Burchell (VP, Policy and Government Affairs at Allscripts), former vice chair of EHRA and current vice chair of our Public Policy Leadership Workgroup, provides background and insights into the recent repeal of the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) regulation, why your provider customers are happy about it, and how it moves us forward in implementing a value-based reimbursement model.

Read her post, “R.I.P. SGR” on the Allscripts blog.

We hope you’ll bookmark this page and visit it often for the latest insights from your EHRA leadership team and peers at member companies. We’re committed to an open dialog that is respectful and informative. Topic areas include meaningful use, public policy, privacy and security, certification, patient safety, usability, standards and interoperability, and quality measures.

Check out the EHRA Blog Guidelines at the link above, and submit your posts (and, optionally, a photo) to Elizabeth (Liddy) West at ewest123@msn.com. We welcome original posts as well as links to posts that our members might find of interest.