Under the Proposed Rule, physicians and non-physician practitioners – for example, nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) – can order and bill for APCM services. Here’s what digital healthcare innovators need to know.
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The CMS Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) has spent the last 6 years testing out a variety of models for value-based care and payment--the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) and other ACO models, the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) Initiative, the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement Model, and various Medicaid and CHIP initiatives. As the Administration doubles down on its commitment to shift payments away from fee-for-service (FFS), it continues to innovate, building programs to align incentives to person-centered, comprehensive, high quality health care. In that vein, in July of this year, CMS will begin taking applications from practices for participation in a new CMMI program: the CPC+ program.
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In the April 4, 2016 edition of Part B News, Rebecca Gwilt talks about integration of behavioral health care into acute and primary care settings.
"For individual physicians, simply instituting a process to administer basic depression screening is an easy first step,” says Gwilt. That might be the kind of depression screening attached to annual wellness visits, which may be quite simple (PBN 3/14/16). Or you can kick it up a notch with something like the PHQ-9 (Patient Health Questionnaire depression eval), the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) or the 20-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D)."
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On February 5, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Sylvia Burwell, announced a proposed rule that would update privacy rules regarding substance abuse records--for the first time since 1987. This proposed rule has the potential to ease barriers to streamlined and efficient exchange of patient information across the care spectrum.
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