Samantha Liss June 7, 2019
Dive Brief:
- CMS is calling on the public to submit
ideas on how to eliminate administrative burdens and excessive red tape in
America's healthcare system. Comments are due Aug. 12.
- The
request for information is seeking input on how to "shift more
of clinicians' time and our healthcare system's resources from needless
paperwork to high-quality care that improves patient health,"
CMS said in a
statement Thursday.
- The
agency is especially interested in ideas that include targeting reporting
and documentation requirements, prior authorization and enrollment
and eligibility determination.
Dive Insight:
Doctors and
other providers have longed complained excessive paperwork requirements
distracts them from the work of medical care and spurs burnout. A recent report found it
also leads to diminished productivity at a significant cost to the industry.
CMS launched
its initiative to reduce administrative burden in 2017 and claims it can expect
to save the system 40 million hours and $5.7 billion through both final and
proposed rules. In this latest RFI, CMS said it's looking for feedback from
patients and their families to clinicians on what mandates could be eliminated.
"In
removing what doesn't add value, we're making room for what does. Our goal is
to ensure that doctors are spending more time with their patients and less time
in administrative tasks," CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a
statement.
So far, the
agency has addressed 83% of the "actionable items" addressed in the
2017 RFI, which generated feedback from more than 2,000 stakeholders in 23
states, CMS said.
One example
includes eliminating 79 "overly burdensome, redundant, or low-value
measures" on quality reporting.
Another has
resulted in changes to the home health recertification, which "eliminated
the need for a physician to include a separate statement about how much longer
home health services are needed. These common-sense measures add up to save
time and cut down on paperwork throughout a clinician's day."
Some health
systems have attempted to address the burnout issue by hiring chief
wellness officers.
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