This week Colin and I will be participating in the Medical Practice Excellence Pathways Conference that is being hosted virtually by MGMA. While we all look forward to MGMA’s Leaders conference in person in San Diego later this year, the knowledge sharing at the virtual event today was good. In fact, I was impressed by the number of healthcare executives that joined the MGMA event virtually and were engaged in the chat that went alongside each session.
As we kickoff our coverage of the event, I thought it would be worthwhile to do a Twitter roundup of some of the tweets we shared while attending the event. You’ll notice three main themes in our tweets based on the sessions we attended: regulatory updates, revenue cycle management, and ambient clinical voice. Check out our highlights below.
A look at the telehealth acts that could impact Medicare telehealth from @MGMA session today.
Lots to watch here and seems bipartisan. #MPE21 #HITsm #TelemedNow pic.twitter.com/ATKQpaoman
— John Lynn (@techguy) May 11, 2021
This is going to be extremely important legislation to watch as we see what the future of telehealth holds.
Interesting slide on the healthcare policy priorities we can expect from the “new” administration for the rest of 2021. An important topic.
The middle one seems like the big one here, but lots of speculation about what will really happen with it. #MPE21 #HITsm pic.twitter.com/Vko598MrRe
— John Lynn (@techguy) May 11, 2021
No surprise a new administration means new priorities. This summarizes the hot ones. The middle one is what’s going to likely impact people the most. It’s also the biggest wildcard on what will actually happen. We’re all just speculating at this point.
2 items that @MGMA is watching is continuing the 2% Medicare sequester moratorium and to not do the pending 4% Medicare cuts. Both will need to be addressed in 2021. #HITsm #MPE21 pic.twitter.com/TVvmyRkiEf
— John Lynn (@techguy) May 11, 2021
These cuts are an important thing to watch for medical practices and obviously an important legislative priority for MGMA. Both will need legislative action before the end of the year.
Love the concept of the legal merger versus an operational merger by @AimeeGreeter_CG from @cokergroup #MPE21 #HITsm
An interesting concept for medical practices to consider. pic.twitter.com/MsIumFLLpT
— John Lynn (@techguy) May 11, 2021
I did slip into the medical practice merger and acquisitions session briefly and found this slide on the concept of Legal Mergers vs Operational Mergers something worth considering as medical practices figure out their paths forward.
In a poll last year, 90% of @MGMA respondents said that they’d participated in the first PPP program. I probably shouldn’t be surprised that so many practices were hit hard and eligible. Definitely says something about how the PPP program helped out healthcare though. #MPE21
— John Lynn (@techguy) May 11, 2021
It will be interesting to look at these numbers and some of the other Cares Act numbers in the future to see how important they were to keeping many small practices alive.
Important comment about patients now having co-pays that 6 months ago they didn’t have because it was waived for COVID. #MPE21 #HITsm
— John Lynn (@techguy) May 11, 2021
A lot of the discussion in this revenue cycle management sessions was on collecting patient payments. There was a strong push for credit card on file. Although, the tweet above highlights another challenge practices are about to face as various co-pays that were waived during COVID go back into effect.
Interesting medical practice denial benchmarks from @MGMA session. How does your practice compare?
Important note that it’s ok to be above or below these benchmarks if you understand why you are. #HITsm #MPE21 pic.twitter.com/wEFUmdx8Zq
— John Lynn (@techguy) May 11, 2021
MGMA is known for their medical practice benchmarks. If you’re not using their vast data, then you should. The above is a small look into their denial benchmarks.
How many of you are seeing payment via mobile phone?
*crickets from panel*
Interesting that no one really wanted to take that question on, but maybe they were just being nice to the other panelists.
Eventually a great comment about patients forcing practices to do it. #MPE21
— John Lynn (@techguy) May 11, 2021
I’ll admit I was surprised by this reaction of the panel to this question. As noted in the tweet, maybe they were just trying to be respectful panelists, but it felt like no one wanted to answer this question. Once they did answer, I got the feeling that patients were forcing them into this, but they weren’t really happy with it as a solution. It wasn’t clear why, but I’d like to learn more about what seemed like a hesitancy to me. Seemed like something was afraid to be spoken, but not sure what. Reminded me of the CIO I once heard talk about the cloud who said in a shrill voice, “Well, yeah, we use the cloud, but we don’t want to.”
Best understatement so far at #MPE21 “We didn’t become doctors to do documentation or billing. We want to help people be healthy.” – Physician on @NuanceInc video #HITsm pic.twitter.com/SwORtlTcbH
— Colin Hung (@Colin_Hung) May 11, 2021
Definitely a great quote from Shafiq Rab. While true, there’s certainly a balance in every job between what you wanted to be doing and what the job requires. Like most things in life, there’s a balance and most of us probably feel the balance for doctors between patient care and administrative requirements is out of balance.
Watching this simulation of Ambient Voice EHR. Pretty cool to see how this would be a MUCH better encounter for patient and physician. I wonder if any phys would actually project the captions in real-time on the wall – that would be AWESOME. @NuanceInc #MPE21 #HITsm pic.twitter.com/wl2Jzu6itl
— Colin Hung (@Colin_Hung) May 11, 2021
The demo of ambient clinical voice (or as Nuance prefers, ambient clinical intelligence) was fun to see. Although, we all know that a demo only shows you so much. This podcast on ambient clinical voice we did will give you a better view into the ups and downs of the solution. Plus, it’s worth making it clear that there are still people (similar to scribes) in the background that are ensuring the quality of the documentation that’s produced.
Many people watching the demo probably will assume it’s technology that’s making this happen when it’s actually a mix of technology and people. How quickly Nuance can shift those people to AI is going to be a key thing to watch in the evolution of this solution. As it is, it’s a glorified virtual scribe which is still an improvement over self documentation, but not quite the EHR auto documentation nirvana that we all desire.
