Dear Praxis Clients,

If you are planning to attest for MIPS for this year, please keep in mind that by October 1, at the latest, you must be up and running with your
Practice Advisories and other Datum items needed for attestation this year.

Last week, we mailed you the latest list of up-to-date PAs.  We will be happy to assist you with any PAs that may not be on the list, but you need to give us enough time to do so. 

Once again, even if we develop a PA on your behalf, you should still review it for accuracy and adapt it to your practice.  In short, you must be familiar with the guideline you will attest for and make sure that the PA meets your approach or if not, improve it. It is not unusual for us to
receive a request from a well-meaning office manager or assistant at the beginning of the following year requesting our assistance on MIP
attestations retrospectively (for the year before).  The assumption made is that meeting Quality Guidelines is a simple matter of "pushing a button," the way you generate a bill, something somehow apart from the actual practice of medicine.

What makes it confusing is that other systems resolve this by doing just that, by straight-jacketing providers into practicing medicine in pre-set ways within templates that are stressful at best and may be harmful to the practice.  Praxis recognizes that you are unique in the way you think and the way you work, and that the purpose of the EMR is to empower you and not hinder your way of practicing medicine.  On the other hand, if you resolve to attest for a given CMS guideline, we recommend you plan an approach to meet it in the way that least detracts from your time and from your practice, and if possible, that empowers both.  That is why pre-planning for these guidelines prior to the start of reporting period is crucial.  There is no such thing as a retrospective query in electronic medical records.  It is a logical impossibility.  All retrospective queries are prospective in disguise.  What Praxis does, is it turns most attestations into practice advisories which then 1. remind you of what must be done at the point of care-they are self-reminders-and 2. chart them for you so you do not have to waste time typing, and 3. Generate the required codes you will need to attest, resulting in very high scores.  However, you still need to understand the PA you will use, and if you can, improve it your way.  From then on, the PA acts automatically on your behalf, and you should score highly with little effort.

Please note that we have focused mostly on registry as opposed to eCQM type PAs because this is what has been requested by other clients in the past, but we will be happy to oblige you with the eCQMs displayed or even others, if you give us enough time. Please let us know asap.

Remember that there is a whole video section on MIPS in our Training Videos page:

http://www.praxisemr.com/videos  ("MIPS/MACRA")

Learning to work with PAs should be an intellectually enjoyable experience for you, but please do not delay.

Thank you and please keep your critiques coming.

___________________________________________________

Richard M. Low, MD

CEO

Infor-Med Corporation - Praxis® Electronic Medical Records

5800 S Eastern Ave Suite 500, Commerce, CA 90040, USA

Direct: (818) 264 4032 Office:  (818) 592-2900 x 5

<Richard.Low@PraxisEMR.com>

Direct fax: (818)743-7759