by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Feb 27, 2017 | Dr. Marissa Carter, Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
I have long been fascinated by the prediction of wound healing. Well over 15 years ago Dr. David Margolis and his colleagues told us—and still tell us today—that simpler models are better, that starting with initial wound age and area and a grading of the severity of...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Dec 28, 2016 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
From The Editor Tue, 12/13/16 – 16:02 Login to Download PDF version Issue Number: Volume 10 Issue 12 – December 2016 Author(s): Caroline E. Fife, MD, FAAFP, CWS, FUHM My Dad’s definition of “mixed emotions” was seeing your mother-in-law drive off a cliff...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Oct 18, 2016 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
This December, two months from now, all the 2015 quality data reported by any eligible provider (collected by any mechanism) will be made public by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). If you are a hyperbaric medicine or wound care practitioner who...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Aug 26, 2016 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy, Quality Payment Program
An important paper has been released by the U.S. Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Registry (HBOTR) detailing its work in Medicare reimbursement issues. “Rapid analysis of hyperbaric oxygen therapy registry data for reimbursement purposes,” a technical paper by Caroline E....
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jul 8, 2016 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
I keep reading articles in which people discuss “quality measures in the outpatient wound center” as if they actually existed. I thought I’d post the quality measures that can currently be reported from an outpatient clinic. Since nearly all of them...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jun 1, 2016 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
I am going to describe the process by which CMS calculates Quality and Resource Use and then show you data from my own Quality and Resource Use Report (QRUR). Warning: there is math involved, and there is no possible way to make this topic interesting. However, it is...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 13, 2016 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
I am explaining MIPS, the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System. Although MIPS does not begin until 2017, 85% of the MIPS score is derived from performance in the 2 quality programs that clinicians should already be engaged in: Meaningful Use of an EHR (MU) and the...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 5, 2016 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
I’m picking up where I’d left off before SAWC Spring – explaining MIPS, the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System. Although MIPS does not begin until 2017, 85% of the MIPS score is derived from performance in the 2 quality programs that clinicians...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Apr 11, 2016 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
Last week I attended the National Quality Forum (NQF) meeting in Washington, D.C. — Re-engineering Quality Data for Value. Due to the high prevalence rate of multiple co-morbidities among patients, there was much discussion about how to properly risk stratify...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Mar 24, 2016 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
Each performance year, CMS sets a “performance threshold” (PT) which is the number of points at which a provider receives 0% adjustment to their Medicare Part B payments. If, just for the sake of illustration, the PT threshold is 50 points, then a provider earning 50...
