Home Forums Discussions MACRA/MIPS Promoting Interoperability: Support Electronic Referral Loops

Promoting Interoperability: Support Electronic Referral Loops By Receiving and Incorporating Health Information

Hello,
In order to meet this measure, I need at least one doctor to send me records that I can incorporate into my practice. The problem is that I do not know any doctor around here who uses direct messaging to communicate. When I talked to AC support they told me to send a "test" patient to myself and then it will be enough to show that I can use it. I tried and tried but it did not appear in the report. I only increased my denominator.
How are you guys doing it?
Thanks.

Yeah, I have a case # with support on this and they haven't gotten back to me in a week. The Electronic Referral Loops are not working on the outgoing side, and I have specialists with Direct E-mail addresses. There is also a problem in the electronic prescribing enumeration and the patient access to electronic records. We really do need to get these issues fixed and I really worry about their testing program and beta sites must not be using these features. Get it together AC, if I lose substantial money to these quality measures I really have to consider moving on. I know everybody denigrates these measures but they really are important not just for "meeting the measure."

There are a couple issues here that I will address. First off, sending a transfer of care to yourself via secure message will NOT count for the measure, especially the receive portion. (I am going to speak with the support managers about this information. Support should not be telling people this) This need to be a new patient to your practice. If you are sending to yourself, then it won't be a new patient. You mention that you do not know any providers with a direct address, and that is ok. This is where exclusions come into play. There is an exclusion for that measure were if you receive less than 100 transfers of care electronically, you are excluded from the measure. I would just take that in this scenario

Now for MIPS, there is an exclusion that you can take easily that gets you out of all of the Promoting Interoperability, including Closing Referral Loops, ERX, and even the Security Risk Assessment. Its available to most AC practices because most of you are considered a "small practice", which is under 15 providers. Taking this exclusion, will exclude you from the entire PI category for MIPS, and it assigns the 25 points you would get from there to the Quality section. Here is the link with the details https://qpp.cms.gov/mips/exception-applications#promotingInteroperabilityHardshipException-2021

Now I would only take this IF you are collecting quality measures and performing well in that area.

Now onto Dr Miller. I apologize that no one has gotten back to you. I have pulled your case and I am going to have someone from support reach out to you today. I will also be calling you later today myself to go over some of the more broader issues that you are mentioning.

Mark, thanks for your help with the Promoting Interoperability piece. Support got back to me and updated our server to the latest version, 11.1.4. I will be instituting changes with our operations that should really bring the numbers up.

You’re a wizard, Mark! With your help and the update to 11.1.4 everyone of my issues is going to be resolved, thanks again!

You are welcome. If you need help, you can reach out to me directly.