Quality reporting in the healthcare industry
Quality reporting in healthcare can be the foundation of both a solid business plan and a commitment to better patient care. By identifying and tracking clinical quality measures, your healthcare organization can meet reporting requirements, benefit from incentives designed to reward improved health care quality, and reduce the overall cost of care.
What Is quality reporting in healthcare?
Today, healthcare Quality Reporting focuses on specific measures for delivering patient care. This includes both the cost of care and the outcomes. For organizations that provide certain healthcare services, each quality measure reported on can improve overall scores tied to reimbursement rates.
Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) oversees a Quality Payment System that uses value-based care metrics to reward healthcare providers and organizations that provide Medicare part B services. Requirements include a mandate to take part in quality reporting and show year-over-year quality improvement.
Quality measurement reporting requirements can vary from organization to organization. Most organizations can select specific areas to focus on, targeting the outcome measure for each area to show improvement and raise their quality score.
Individual care providers and group practices, clinics, or other health care facilities can benefit from submitting an annual quality report. Besides incentives offered through MIPs, this quality data can help to leverage better reimbursement rates from independent insurers as well.
The future of quality reporting
You can readily accomplish modern quality reporting by leveraging the wealth of patient data available across your organization. A good place to start is to implement a physician quality reporting system. The next step is to identify and record relevant health care quality measures so you can track improvements.
As the parameters for MIPS quality reporting continue to change annually, being able to use a 360 degree view of your organization’s data, from patient populations to outcomes to financials, is key to success.
If you can show that you are delivering healthcare that is proactive and value-based, maximizing patient outcomes and minimizing costs, you can receive the top-tier reimbursements and incentives available.
You need to be not just a healthcare organization, but a quality improvement organization, focused on the continual raising of the bar for both your patients and your bottom line.
A reporting system that is designed for meaningful use under MIPS guidelines will deliver reports that keep you in compliance and earn top scores year after year.
Whether you are a singular healthcare provider, managing a home health organization, or running a major hospital, quality reporting is the path to maximizing revenues.
How quality reporting impacts healthcare workflows
Each health care provider must buy into the concept of quality reporting. They must also spend the few extra seconds it takes to accurately enter clinical data within the system.
At the start of the year, it is good to highlight individual measures. It is also a good idea to refresh awareness among your providers, on a monthly basis, to help assure compliance and participation.
If your organization is large enough, one person can be in charge of quality assurance to help make certain that data is being properly attributed to target measures.
When quality measures are top-of-mind for all providers, workflows adjust to make space for better reporting. Time costs associated with reporting can actually go down over time as providers become more organized and patient record-keeping reaches a new level of standardization.
For rural health providers or community health clinics serving vulnerable populations, MIPS reporting can be even more important because of the high concentration of Medicare patients being served.
By integrating reporting with an electronic health record (EHR) system, you can automate much of the clinical quality reporting process. Strictly observing data quality control and making regular checks should ensure that you pull the appropriate data from your records.
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Quality reporting benefits
The benefits of choosing to implement quality reporting and value-based care as core pieces of your organizational infrastructure are many.
Better healthcare quality overall
When you engage in quality reporting, any issues with patient care and outcomes will come instantly to the surface, where you can deal with them. The result is better quality care and more positive outcomes for the patients you serve.
Reduced cost of care
Value-based care does not mean cutting corners; rather, it is a commitment to providing higher value to patients at a lower cost by being proactive about patient care. When diagnosing and treating potential or emergent issues early on, you can improve a patient’s overall wellbeing. This can also delay or stop additional or related problems before they cause a deterioration in patient health.
Increased revenues
Quality reporting is a relatively easy and foolproof way to improve MIPS scoring for top-tier incentives and maximize your reimbursements from other value-based programs. The result is a better bottom line for your organization.
How Tangible can help
Tangible Solutions is here to help providers and practices that seek to maximize their eligibility and streamline reporting for programs like MIPS and others. Our Happe-Analytics software is a patented program that helps you maximize the value of reporting without the hassle.
Happe-Analytics can show you exactly where you stand in relation to potential incentives. You also can view year-over-year improvement for key measures by analyzing your quality outcomes. Perhaps its best feature is delivering easy-to-read reports for compliance with multiple programs besides MIPS.
If you are ready to invest in quality reporting and take immediate actions to improve internal workflows, contact us today.