by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jun 15, 2017 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
In 2011, we published a paper entitled, “Why is it hard to do the right thing in wound care?” in which we documented that only 17% of venous ulcers were treated with adequate compression every time they were seen at a wound center. Those statistics were...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 15, 2017 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
You have until March 2018 to submit data. If you are subject to MIPS and do nothing, you will lose 4% of your Medicare Part B payments (although you will not experience this penalty until 2019). Click on the website below and enter your National Provider Identifier...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Apr 18, 2017 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Quality Payment Program
I have been discussing the “2016 Prior Year Benchmarks” report for all the quality measures included in the 2016 Quality and Resource Use Reports (QRUR)....
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 30, 2016 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
The Hyperbaric oxygen therapy prior authorization project has been in effect a little more than a year and CMS is in the process of reviewing its impact to prepare an interim report. As the Medicare coffers dwindle, we have to ask ourselves how we can best utilize...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jul 29, 2016 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
Friday’s Featured Friend and Guest Blogger is none other than Helen Gelly, MD, FUHM, FACCWS, UHM/ABPM. When it rains, it pours. There seems to be no end to the rain clouds on the horizon for hyperbaric medicine. But HBO is not the only specialty at risk. CMS...
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. | 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...
