The new year is going to be important for physicians in meeting regulatory requirements and reporting deadlines. These deadlines will affect quality of care, adoption and usage of Electronic Health Records (EHRs). These deadlines relate to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and more importantly, the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

January 1, 2014: CMS Meaningful Use Stage 2

For Eligible Providers (EPs) who are treating Medicare and Medicaid patients, Meaningful Use Stage 2 begins with the turn of the new year. However, not every EHR product is ready for Meaningful Use Stage 2. On the flipside, physicians need to demonstrate Meaningful Use for a 3-month reporting period, before October 1, 2014. In case providers miss this deadline, a 2% payment cut will be imposed in 2015.

January 1, 2014: Medicaid Patient Influx

From January 1, 2014, 22 states and District of Columbia will expand Medicaid programs to comply with a regulation of the ACA. As per the law, all states responsible to comply with the ACA regulation, will have to provide Medicaid facilities to children and adults with household income below 133% of the federal poverty level. More patients in the Medicaid program will certainly put pressure on the burdened healthcare system and mean more physician payments in 2014.

Under the program, Medicaid payments for primary care physicians will be raised by up to 100% of Medicare reimbursements. It is to benefit physicians that did not get Medicaid payments in 2013 as the incentive payments stop at the end of 2014.

February 28, 2014: Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS)

PQRS requires physicians to report for clinical quality measures such as smoking cessation, cancer screenings etc. October 18, 2013 is the last date to avoid the 1.5% penalty for not participating in this program. However, physicians can avoid this penalty by participating in the 2013 program, and get a 0.5% bonus. The reporting deadline is February 28, 2014 and physicians submitting data through registries have a deadline of March 31, 2014.

March 31, 2014: Purchasing health insurance

As per the ACA every American not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid programs must purchase a health insurance by March 31, 2014. Physicians must also purchase health insurances for themselves and their staff. In case consumers do not sign up until March 31, additional tax will be imposed at the year end.

The rates offered by insurance exchanges are still unclear. In a survey, 80% of primary care physicians, said they did not consider a role in providing insurance information.

October 1, 2014: ICD-10 compliance

The ICD-10 codes will come into effect from October 1, 2014. The CMS does not plan to push the deadline any further. The shift to ICD-10 isn’t easy and might take practices several months to learn the 68,000 codes.

January 1, 2015: The Medicare Volume Modifier

The CMS will start applying a value modifier under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) on January 1, 2015. This means that while calculating physician payments, cost and quality information will be taken into consideration, ensuring a shift from volume of care to value of care reimbursements.