Posted By Fuller Harvey On March 15, 2018
The Tweets Heard Round the Medicare and Medicaid World: Spotlight on CMS Administrator Seema Verma
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services director Seema Verma is drawing the spotlight to changes coming to MACRA (Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act) with a series of declarative Twitter posts.
And Tweets and re-Tweets are resounding.
For example, here’s one of her latest:
But the Tweet truly heard ‘round the Medicare and Medicaid world (according to number of re-Tweets and comments) is:
Bold. Truth-speaking. Not the typical political-appointee verbiage for her! No, sirree!
Since MACRA was Congressionally enacted, Administrator Verma is not at liberty to slice and dice or even abandon it. . .but she and CMS do have the oversight ability to determine how it is managed, or how oversight is handled. Verma and her team appear to be steering the agency to streamline MACRA to a (dare we say it?) more “user-friendly” beast.
As vendors of federally-certified Electronic Health Records (EHR) would attest themselves: user-friendly is a priority. “Happy users” translates to happy health-care providers. And clinics and agencies with happy health-care providers not only deliver the truest form of patient-centric service possible, but also they are generally more productive. [A study by Warwick University (UK) “found that happiness made people around 12% more productive.”]
User-friendly electronic records which improve care coordination. . . a streamlined MACRA. . . hope is twittering in the wind for the Medicare and Medicaid world. . .and Administrator Verma appears to be leading the charge, one Tweet at a time. Can you hear it?