Getting Your Providers to Believe in MIPS

Like most practices, King’s Daughters’ Health wasn't initially eager to embrace the MIPS program.

“We joined an ACO honestly because we thought that would get us out of MIPS,” Megan Mouser, King’s Daughters’ population health and quality program manager, admits today. “But what we found was that, when we did our quality reporting through the ACO, our scores were brought down by the other practices. So we thought, ‘Let’s go out on our own. We can do better by ourselves.’ And we have.”

As expected, going it alone was, at first, a monumental burden. Megan’s team was spending hours and hours manually abstracting charts and then entering them into the CMS Web Interface format. Then they discovered Medisolv.

“We knew right away that Medisolv’s platform would make life so much better,” Megan recalls. “It was updated all the time, so we would have real-time data, which was fantastic because we were always operating off old data. And it wouldn’t require our IT team to be rebuilding and running reports constantly. Plus, we could break down the data by providers to see who was struggling and even which measures they were struggling on. Being able to clearly identify the problem areas was huge.”

But there was one challenge that remained: getting provider and staff buy-in.

But Wait...Why Are We Doing This?

“People didn’t understand the ‘why’ behind why we are doing this,” she explains. “The reaction was basically, ‘OK, so it’s just one more button you want me to click.’  My focus became educating our providers and nurses that, yes, we’re doing this for CMS and to get reimbursement, but also because, at the end of the day, it will help us do what’s best for our patients.”

Megan and her team implemented a step-by-step plan to educate the staff. This included yearly learning modules for nurses, monthly data review meetings with the director of physician practices, and regular sharing of quality improvement success stories through staff communications.

“With providers in particular, I’ve really tried to ease them into it,” she adds. “I’ve learned that throwing something at a doctor and saying, ‘Here do it!’ doesn’t always work. I started

sending the data to the providers themselves. I had several providers ask me to explain certain measures to them, or ask me for measure specifications, which I loved.”

Getting Providers to Love Their Data

Once providers were comfortable with the data, Megan took it a step further, establishing annual goals for each measure. She also began sending providers weekly reports that outlined what appointments they had scheduled for the week and identified any quality gaps that could be addressed during those appointments. Providers then send updates to Megan so she can track which gaps were or were not corrected, and why.

“A lot of our providers are really paying attention to it now. It’s a process; it’s not an all-at-once thing,” she says. “It’s all about sharing data, keeping it in front of your staff constantly, and being transparent. We are open about sharing everybody’s rates with each other.”

Sharing is (Better) Caring

The effort has paid off, with clear, measurable improvements that have the entire staff energized. On the flu immunization measure alone, King’s Daughters’ jumped from 45% to more than 65% in just one year.

“Overall, I was like ‘Wow, are those really our scores?’” Megan says with a laugh. “We put in a lot of work over the last year, so to see those changes in real time is awesome. We weren’t able to do that before Medisolv.”

“Seeing our measures improve means that our patients are getting better care, and that’s our ultimate goal,” she adds. “If our scores go up, it means our patients are getting better care.”