February 2014

The Colorado Medical Society (CMS) has partnered with the Colorado Medical Group Management Association (CMGMA) again this year to bring you the 2014 Colorado Healthcare Staff Salary Survey. This survey is a continuation of the previous Salary Survey that has been conducted by the CMGMA, CMS and component medical societies across the state for over a decade and will be produced this year by CheckPoint. Continued financial support of the surveys is provided by COPIC Insurance and Colorado Business Bank.

To make these surveys successful, we need your help! These surveys are designed specifically for Colorado medical practices, and your participation is key to our success. Our goal is to accumulate data from all the geographical regions in Colorado and then report the data based on these regions.

The Salary Survey tool is online at www.checkpoint.cmgma.com. This link will take you to a login page but please note that the survey is open to everyone. CMGMA members can log in as usual and complete the survey. Non-CMGMA members can click on the New User link below Member login to sign up to take the survey.

The objective of this survey is to provide Colorado physicians, administrators, and managers with a useful resource that is representative of their local area to set salary and benefit levels within their practices. Having reports at your fingertips that contain salary and benefit benchmarks are critical tools to help practices be effective and competitive in the marketplace.

• Please fill out the questions completely and accurately, as quality data is essential to the process.
• Your completed questionnaire is due by Friday, April 18, 2014 and the report will be available in June 2014.
• There will be a couple of drawings again this year from all responses received as of that date for a Visa gift card, so be sure to return your questionnaire early and have more chances to win!
• All participating practices will receive a FREE copy of the 2014 Staff Salary Survey Report. This report is also available for purchase.

If you have any questions about the survey content itself please contact Eric Speer, chair of the CMGMA Survey Committee at (719) 265-3737 or [email protected]. We appreciate your time, and value your participation.

As part of the ICD-10 Success Initiative, WEDI announced the launch of its ICD-10 Success Initiative webinar series. The purpose of these webinars is to help health IT stakeholders meet the Oct. 1 ICD-10 compliance deadline and to provide answers to common questions.

The first webinar of this series, the Guide to Jumpstart Your ICD-10 Compliance Efforts, is free to attend and will take place on Feb. 21 at 9 a.m. MT. Participation is free; click here to register.

This webinar will present an overview on preparing for the Oct. 1 ICD-10 transition. Regardless of how far along organizations are in their implementation process, this webinar will cover all the bases, including steps to guarantee your documentation is upgraded; essential tactics to warrant that coders can code in ICD-10; confirming practice management systems can take in ICD-10; ensuring transactions can be produced with ICD-10; best practices on testing with trading partners; and the roll of the clearinghouse and what it can and cannot accomplish.

This webinar will feature speakers from the Cooperative Exchange as well as representatives from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Click here to learn more about this webinar.

Eligible professionals must submit their Medicare EHR incentive (Meaningful Use) attestation by 9:59 p.m. MT on March 31 -- an extension from the original Feb. 28 deadline -- in order to earn a 2013 incentive payment and avoid a 1 percent penalty in 2015. The extension does not change deadlines for the Medicaid EHR incentive program or any other CMS reporting program.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has provided the below tips on attesting:

• Ensure that your payment assignment and other relevant information is up to date in the Medicare payment system PECOS
• Make sure to include a valid email address in your EHR program registration
• Consider logging on to use the attestation system during non-peak hours such as evenings and weekends
• Log on to the registration and attestation system now and ensure that your information is up to date and begin entering your 2013 data
• If you experience attestation problems, call the EHR Incentive Program Help Desk at 1-888-734-6433 (M-F 6:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. MT) and report the problem
• If your organization has more than 1,000 providers assigned to a proxy user, use the PECOS system to designate additional proxies to facilitate attestation.

Click here to go to the federal CMS website to register or attest for the Medicare and/or Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs. Click here to go to MGMA's resource center to view Meaningful Use resources, such as a compilation of most-asked member questions.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has released updated PQRS resources summarizing 2014 reporting requirements for the program. The PQRS program will apply a 2 percent penalty in 2016 to providers who do not meet reporting criteria in the 2014 performance year. In most cases, providers must report on at least three PQRS measures in 2014 to avoid the 2016 payment adjustment.

Click here to go to MGMA's PQRS resource page to learn more about how to avoid this penalty, and read MGMA's 2014 Final Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Analysis (reference pages 10-12).

Did you know that 48 percent of better-performing practices collect more than 90 percent of patient payments at the time of service? See decreased accounts receivable and more cash flow in your practice immediately by collecting payment from patients at the time of service - before they walk out the door with the help of an AMA toolkit. 

Learn how to use electronic health care transactions, such as the electronic eligibility benefit inquiry and response transactions, to help facilitate point-of-care pricing and improve cash flow. This toolkit will walk you through the process so your practice can start collecting from patients at the time of service! You can also learn more about electronic eligibility verification. Click here to access the AMA's toolkit and more.

With the ICD-10 go-live date rapidly approaching, hospitals and health systems need to make ICD-10 a priority if they want to avoid costly surprises and setbacks. This is the message from RT Welter & Associates, Inc., which will hold an interactive and hands-on ICD-10 training designed to prepare coders for the AAPC and AHIMA ICD-10 proficiency examinations.

Participants will gain the tools they need to appropriately select ICD-10-CM and ICD-10-PCS codes. These training sessions will be coder-centric, and the content will be designed for those staff who will be responsible for applying (or verifying) these codes to documentation. Throughout the academy, participants will be given an assortment of scenarios to code to obtain the proficiency they need for coding in ICD-10.

Upcoming Coder Academies will be held March 12-14 in Englewood and June 11-13 in Thornton. Click here to read more information and to register. Colorado ICD-10 Coalition members can receive a $50 discount off the Coder Academy registration fee. Simply print the registration form, write "Colorado ICD-10 Coalition Member" on it and return through the instructions at the top of the form.

In This Issue

Colorado Medical Group Management Association

March, April, May - Three-part series on LEAN for Private Physician Practices, Kearin Schulte

CMGMA webinars are free for active CMGMA members, $50 for non-members. Click here for more information on the CMGMA website.

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Submit your event by e-mailing [email protected].

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American Medical Association

Connect for Health Colorado

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Aetna

Anthem

Colorado Medicaid

Kaiser Permanente of Colorado

Novitas

Rocky Mountain Health Plans

United