Recognizing that MGMA must juggle several projects, what issue has been top of mind this year?
Early in the year, of course, it was the healthcare reform legislation. Now it is the implementation of that legislation and the looming 30 percent cut in physician fees for the Medicare program, scheduled to occur around the end of the year unless Congress acts. Regardless of your political affiliation, the way Congress is approaching healthcare payment policy is disorganized at best and irresponsible at worst.
How has the role of healthcare information technology changed for your members over the past 10 years, five years?
HIT has moved from being an interesting experiment by a few practices that were innovators and early adopters to an emerging necessity of staying in the healthcare delivery business. E-prescribing and EHRs are mandatory for practices wanting to avoid Medicare payment penalties, and the numbers of innovative applications of the Web, telemedicine, home-based patient monitoring, and a variety of other IT tools continue to explode. The beneficiaries are ultimately going to be patients, as HIT makes it easier and cheaper for all the parties in healthcare to access the information they need, when they need it, to provide better-coordinated, more cost-effective, safer, higher quality care.
What is the single most helpful thing you do to help your members adopt healthcare information technology and move toward meaningful use?
Probably it is our focus on analyzing the practice and the type of EHR system that will be the best fit well in advance of implementation, then addressing the necessary work flow changes to make implementation work. Our MGMA Healthcare Consulting Group is kept very busy helping practices with selection and implementation – and no two practices are exactly the same.
What is the greatest challenge/pain point for your members today (IT-related or not)?
The biggest challenge / pain point is the uncertainty about revenues – starting with Medicare, but rippling out to the private payers, as well. A close second is the rapid pace of consolidation and integration going on – for many of our members, it’s “to sell, or not to sell? That is the question.
What is your proudest accomplishment over the past year?
Keeping our MGMA membership numbers up (2 percent growth this fiscal year) despite the recession, and positioning our association to be a key force for medical groups in a rapidly changing healthcare delivery system.
What are you reading?
I’m just finishing a fascinating book on the meltdown of the subprime mortgage market: Michael Lewis’ The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. On the lighter side, I recently finished Carl Hiassen’s new novel: Star Island. It’s hilarious.
