“CMS has sought public comment on allowing hospitalists to align with their hospital’s quality measures for CMS quality programs,” he says. “But without this alignment option or a specialty code, we need to at least have sufficient measures to reflect hospitalists’ actual practice and what’s important to hospital medicine.”
Dr. Conway, a former hospitalist and chair of SHM’s Public Policy Committee, says he welcomes feedback from SHM and its members on suggested changes to CMS policy.
“I would certainly encourage hospital medicine to have discussions with the CMS payment and coding team that makes determinations about specialty status,” he says.
The Future?
Ironically, the potential panacea of HM-specific codes has not been fully embraced because of fears of unintended consequences. For example, in the case of hospitalists practicing in SNFs, the PCP designation is problematic in terms of lower reimbursement rates. Some hospitalists, however, will see a bump in total revenue the next two years because they will be designated PCPs and paid more via the Medicaid-to-Medicare parity regulation included in the Affordable Care Act.
“Hospital medicine will want to think about that as it goes through the process,” Dr. Conway says. “Internally with CMS, if you’re a specialty, we will specifically consider if you’re primary care or not. Whereas, if you’re in the internal-medicine bucket, by definition from the traditional CMS specialty coding perspective, you are primary care. So if you make a point to carve out your own category, then it’ll be a decision every time if you’re primary care or are you a specialty.”
Richard Quinn is a freelance writer in New Jersey.
Call for PQRS Measures
CMS’ annual call for Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) measures is a rite of summer. And Dr. Conway hopes that when CMS culls through this summer’s batch, hospitalists weighed in often.
“I know that the surgeons, the cardiologists, and others, every year, they say, ‘Here are the 20 new measures we’re thinking about for our specialty,’” he says. “So I just want to make clear that SHM should do the same. Identify the measures out there that are most relevant to you.”
Dr. Conway adds that the process shouldn’t be limited to the society level. Individual practitioners can reach out to CMS and weigh in as well.
Physicians “need to have sufficient measures to cover [their] specialty, and societies can play a key role in developing measures or identifying measures,” Dr. Conway says. “If there’s measures you want in the program, by all means, tell us.”
—Richard Quinn