CMS Approves NIPM-QCDR for 2018

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has reapproved the NIPM-QCDR for the 2018 reporting year for the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) under the CMS Quality Payment Program (QPP). Clinicians who participate in the NIPM-QCDR through the ASIPP Quality Registry can fulfill all MIPS requirements, and are eligible for potential positive MIPS payment adjustments.

"ASIPP launched the NIPM-QCDR in 2017 to help interventional pain physicians succeed under mandated quality reporting programs like MACRA and MIPS," said Laxmaiah Manchikanti, M.D., Chair, ASIPP Board of Directors. "Receiving approval from CMS as a MIPS reporting registry again in 2018 is, of course, an important milestone for the specialty and society. But more importantly, with the addition of outcomes measures and PROs, we are taking the necessary steps to demonstrate the value of the care we provide."

To read the NIPM QCDR Measure Titles CLICK HERE  

To read the NIPM QCDR Measure Details CLICK HERE  

Now in its second year, the ASIPP Quality Registry and National Interventional Pain Management - Qualified Clinical Data Registry (NIPM-QCDR) is bringing even more utility to interventional pain physicians to help providers and their patients confidentially and securely report real-world outcomes following procedures performed in an office, surgery center, or hospital.

 

The ASIPP registry is available to all interventional pain physicians and their patients, not just those participating in clinical trials or MIPS. The data from these real-world outcomes will expand knowledge and understanding of interventional pain management and set the stage for healthier discussions regarding healthcare policy and reimbursement.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

CLICK HERE FOR BROCHURE

CLICK HERE FOR HOTEL

The American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians will hold its 20th Annual Meeting March 15-17, 2018 in Orlando, Florida at Marriott Orlando World Center.

Thursday General Session:

RAJ-RACZ DISTINGUISHED LECTURE SERIES

ARNOLD CAPLAN, MD, PHD - KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Mesenchymal Stem Cells: Today, Tomorrow, and Future of Pain Management

LAXMAIAH MANCHIKANTI, MD - KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Evidence Synthesis in IPM: Evolution of EBM or Death of Expertise and Truth

Friday General Session:

MANCHIKANTI DISTINGUISHED LECTURE SERIES

ROBERT LASZEWSKI - KEYNOTE SPEAKER

State of Health Care in the US: Past, Present, and Future

REPRESENTATIVE ED WHITFIELD - KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Health Care Advocacy: ASIPP Involvement with Grass Roots Advocacy Find everything you need for a successful stay.

SENATOR TIM HUTCHINSON - KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Health Care Reform: A View from Washington

Multiple breakout sessions including: Abstract and Posters; Regenerative Medicine; Resident/Fellows; Compliance, Billing and Coding; and various sessions on interventional techniques

CMS Releases Comparative Billing Report Results for Opioid Prescribers

Comparative Billing Reports (CBRs) are educational tools administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). They are developed and disseminated under contract by eGlobalTech, a woman-owned Federal services firm based in Arlington, VA.

The CBRs are disseminated to the provider community to provide insight into billing trends across regions and policy groups. A/B Medicare Administrative Contractors (MACs) have been producing and disseminating limited numbers of CBRs to targeted providers for many years. CMS has now formalized and expanded the program to a national level. 

This report is an analysis of providers submitted as the “Prescribing NPI” on Medicare Part D claims extracted from the Integrated Data Repository based on the latest version of claims as of October 26, 2017. The analysis includes claims with dates of service from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017. National drug codes for opioids were drawn from a listing by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, where there was a known morphine milligram equivalent conversion factor for the drug. Beneficiaries with cancer (ICD-10 diagnosis C00-D49) and/or in hospice for any time from July 1, 2016 - June 30, 2017 were excluded from the analysis. 

Here is the link to Comparative Billing Reports website.

https://www.cbrinfo.net/

 

Reports are available only by speciality.

https://www.cbrinfo.net/node/352

ASIPP Abstract Submission for 2018 Annual Meeting Deadline Feb. 1

This year, we will be making significant changes to the Abstract and Poster Sessions. Submissions will be in two categories: Resident/Fellow and Physician.  Selected posters will be on display for all meeting participants during all breaks and meal times.

  

The Abstract Committee will select the top 25 for publication in Pain Physician and of those 10 will be selected for Abstract presentation and judging during the Annual Meeting. The top 3 will receive cash prizes.

Submit and review this year's rules

Congress Urged to Reverse CMS Policy Linking Clinician Payments to Part B Drug Costs

Many of the nation's leading healthcare organizations are calling on Congress to reverse the new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) policy that has the potential to cause financial uncertainty for many specialists and jeopardize patient access to Part B drug therapies. ¹

Despite warnings from healthcare advocates and Congressional leaders, CMS included a policy change in the CY 2018 Quality Payment Program Final Rule to adjust healthcare providers' reimbursements for Part B drug costs based on their performance in the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS).

Medical Bag

Allscripts recovers after ransomware attack, outages still possible through Monday: 10 things to know

The Chicago-based EHR vendor Allscripts has been recovering since Thursday from a ransomware attack that took down several applications hosted in data centers in Raleigh and Charlotte, N.C., according to  CSO Online.

Some clients were still offline Sunday, according to the  Politico  Morning eHealth newsletter.

Here are 10 things to know.

1. Between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. on Jan. 18, Allscripts was struck by ransomware, affecting applications hosted in its data centers located in Raleigh and Charlotte.

2. At the time of the attack, a company spokeswoman told  Becker's Hospital Review  a "limited number" of its applications were affected. At that time, its Professional EHR and Electronic Prescriptions for Controlled Substances services were unavailable, and other unaffected applications were proactively shut down to protect clients and client data, according to Politico.

3. The vulnerability that was exploited wasn't within an Allscripts application, so self-hosted customers are not at risk, according to  HIStalk .

Becker’s Hospital Review

 

Click HERE to view December issue of IPM Reports

Interventional Pain Management Reports is an Open Access online journal, a peer-reviews journal dedicated to the publication of case reports, brief commentaries and reviews and letters to the editor. It is a peer-reviewed journal written by and directed to an audience of interventional pain physicians, clinicians and basic scientists with an interest in interventional pain management and pain medicine. 

Interventional Pain Management Reports is an official publication of the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians (ASIPP) and is a sister publication of Pain Physician . Interventional Pain Management Reports Interventional Pain Management Reports is an open access journal, available online with free full manuscripts.  

The benefits of publishing in an open access journal that has a corresponding

print edition journal are:  

So submit today your:

Click HERE to submit

High Bioavailability, Fast Absorption of Buprenorphine With New Sublingual Wafer

Preliminary results suggest that a new sublingual buprenorphine wafer may offer higher bioavailability and faster absorption compared with earlier sublingual formulations of the drug for patients treated for acute and chronic pain.

In this open-label 2-way randomized crossover study published in  Pain Medicine , 14 healthy participants receiving naltrexone block were randomly assigned to receive 300 μg intravenous (IV)  buprenorphine  (constant infusion for 5 minutes; n=8), or 800 μg sublingual buprenorphine (2 treatments with a 7-day washout interval between each treatment; n=8).

Blood samples were taken before treatment and at time points ranging from 10 minutes to 48 hours postdose for plasma drug assay.

Clinical Pain Advisor

Webinar: The CMS Quality Payment Program: MACRA– MIPs Final Rule for 2018

The Final Rule of the CMS Merit-Based Incentive Payment System for 2018, MIPS, was published on 11/02/17, and is ~ 1,200 pages. Identified as the Quality Payment Program, QPP, it is extensive in scope to reward or penalize providers for performing certain measures in four performance categories. Last year 2017, the first year of the QPP, was modified and contains changes to the reporting requirements for 2018. The four categories are: (1) Quality (2) Cost (3) Improvement Activities, and (4) Advancing Care Information. The four categories result in a final score of between 0 to 100 points. Depending on the provider's final score, a penalty/reward is assessed, or the provider remains neutral. For 2018 the penalty is 5%. Selecting certain reporting options avoids penalties and even lead to bonus payments on future claims. MIPS replaces PQRS, MU, and the VM (value modifier) programs, but rolls these same programs into the 3 performance categories above and the new category implemented in 2017, Improvement Activities, has been expanded for 2018.

This webinar will explain and review:

–    QUALITY PAYMENT PROGRAM (QPP)

•     MACRA – MIPs

–    Components of MIPs, 2018

 QUALITY PQRS), ACI (Advancing Care Information), IA (Improvement Activity), COST (Resource Use)

»    Scoring

PROVIDE GUIDANCE ON OBTAINING THE QUALITY RESOURCE USE REPORT, QRUR

–    A comparative report prepared by CMS for attributing the COST of care to physicians and groups used to determine resource use in 2018

–    Obtaining an EIDM portal thru Medicare

WEBINAR FEE: $185

WEBINAR DATE: January 25, 2018

TIME: 11:00am-12:30pm CST 

LENGTH: 90 Minutes 

SPEAKER: Deborah H. Tracy, MD, MBA

-Board Certified Anesthesiologist

-Subspecialty Certified Pain Management, ABA

-Board Certified Pain Management, ABIPP

-Diplomat of interventional Pain Practice, WIP

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

FDA Grants Fast Track Designation to Trans-Capsaicin Injection for Knee Osteoarthritis

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Fast Track designation to CNTX-4975 (Centrexion) for the treatment of pain associated with knee osteoarthritis.

CNTX-4975 is a highly potent, ultrapure, synthetic form of trans-capsaicin. A Phase 2b trial, TRIUMPH, found that treatment with CNTX-4975 resulted in significant reductions in pain associated with  knee osteoarthritis . Patients who received a single 1 mg injection of CNTX-4975 (n=71) had a decrease from baseline of –3.8 in Daily Pain with Walking (measured by AUC) compared to –1.3 for placebo ( P  =.0002).

Clinical Pain Advisor

MIPS: Are You in or Are You Out?

Docs aren't sure, and CMS isn't helping

While the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is expected to exempt more than half a million clinicians from the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) in 2018, the agency has yet to tell clinicians who is in and who is out of the program.

MIPS is one of two payment vehicles created as a result of the  the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) , which replaced the almost universally despised Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula.

MedPage Today

How You Can Increase Your 'Google Juice'

Tips for showing high up in searches without paying

If you want to see the first impression you make on most new patients, make sure you Google yourself early and often. Current evidence suggests that most Americans now research doctors online before their first visits by perusing their practices' websites as well as rate-your-doctor websites. In my experience, these e-powered patients typically are far less interested in where a potential caregiver went to medical school and did a residency and fellowship, than in answering the question, "Can I trust and will I like this doctor?"

Search engines try hard to answer that question. Healthcare providers who cooperate with search engines thusly are rewarded with high internet search rankings. That's because their websites possess a trait that historically has been referred to as Google juice. Do doctors need or should they care about Google juice? Probably not all, but I find that a great majority indicate strong interest in seeing their names and practice information on page one of Google search results. That's where Google juice comes in.

 

MedPage Today

Department of Justice News

Michigan Doctor Sentenced to Prison for $1.7 Million Health Care Fraud Scheme

A Detroit, Michigan-area doctor was sentenced to 24 months in prison today for his role in a $1.7 million health care fraud scheme that involved billing Medicare for physician home visits that were medically unnecessary and/or were billed under unwarranted treatment codes that resulted in inappropriately high payments.

Acting Assistant Attorney General John P. Cronan of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider of the Eastern District of Michigan, Special Agent in Charge David P. Gelios of the FBI’s Detroit Division and Special Agent in Charge Lamont Pugh III of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General’s (HHS-OIG) Chicago Regional Office made the announcement.

Gerald Daneshvar M.D., 41, of West Bloomfield, Michigan, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn of the Eastern District of Michigan. Daneshvar was convicted in May 2017 after a two-week jury trial of one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud.  Daneshvar’s co-defendant, Stephen Mason, M.D., was previously sentenced to 18 months on Aug. 22, 2017, and his other co-defendant, Leonard Van Gelder, M.D., awaits sentencing.    Mason and Van Gelder had each previously pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud.  

DOJ