I just finished a chapter on quality measures for the 2nd edition of the Wound Care Certification Study Guide. I tallied up the penalties that a clinician who is not participating in any of the various programs will incur in 2015 and it’s about 5.5% of their Medicare billing for the year. However, it could be a lot more than that, depending on exactly what happens with the “Value Based Purchasing” index inside the Obamacare legislation.
VBP penalties are linked to quality reporting performance and no one knows how big of a hit they will be. I’ve been beating my head against the wall of quality measure development in wound care for 7 years now. Thanks to the US Wound Registry and the Qualified Clinical Data Registry initiative, there are finally some wound care measures to report since there won’t be any wound care measures in PQRS in 2015.
This topic seems very boring but it’s a LOT more important than package pricing of cellular products, for example, since it determines the future of wound care payment policy. I sure hope clinicians wake up one morning and decide to pay attention to this issue, but it might not happen until the payment cuts get big enough.
For more information about the US Wound Registry, please visit www.USWoundRegistry.com.
Dr. Fife is a world renowned wound care physician dedicated to improving patient outcomes through quality driven care. Please visit my blog at CarolineFifeMD.com and my Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/carolinefifemd/videos
The opinions, comments, and content expressed or implied in my statements are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect the position or views of Intellicure or any of the boards on which I serve.
