Category: Provider

Leverage health plan-sponsored programs to combat physician burnout

By Vatica Health | March 16, 2021 | Provider, Risk Adjustment

The statistic is striking: 42% of physicians report feeling burned out. That’s according to a 2021 national survey conducted by Medscape that included more than 12,000 physicians across 29 different specialties. Interestingly, 79% of physicians said this burnout started before the current COVID-19 pandemic with the majority (58%) citing ‘too many bureaucratic tasks’ as the number one reason. While it is too early to measure directly, we anticipate that the COVID-19 pandemic will exacerbate this critical problem, further amplifying the mental, physical, emotional, and financial strain physicians were previously experiencing.

Why is physician burnout dangerous?

First, physician burnout is associated with higher rates of major medical errors. Physicians who are burned out may be less likely to identify and address all of a patient’s chronic conditions, thereby missing out on opportunities to improve outcomes. In addition, it can potentially lead to access challenges as physicians who experience burnout ultimately reduce time spent on direct patient care. The personal effects of physician burnout are also concerning: Increased risk for cardiovascular disease and shorter life expectancy, problematic alcohol use, broken relationships, depression, and suicide. Finally, it can negatively affect patient satisfaction.

The challenge: Increasing administrative burden, inadequate support

There’s no denying the fact that bureaucratic tasks, such as increasing documentation requirements, fuel physician burnout. According to a recent survey, clinical process design and the clinical structure, both of which are highly impacted by EHRs, contribute to approximately 40% of clinician stress. EHR complexity driven by increasingly detailed and nuanced data requirements, creates stress and distracts from patient care.

Healthcare policy makers and regulators continue to mandate even more documentation to demonstrate compliance with laws and standards. The advent of value-based payment models necessitates incremental documentation and workflows to achieve performance goals. Additionally, significant administrative efforts are often required to obtain prior approvals for certain treatments and prescription medications. These tasks are time-consuming contribute to physician burnout. According to a physician survey conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), on average, 24% of working hours were spent on administrative duties.

The solution: Simplicity, support, value, and flexibility

For an immediate impact, health systems and individual physicians can turn to health plan-sponsored programs that improve both clinical and financial performance. Some of these programs supply free clinical and administrative resources and assist with performance in value-based arrangements to yield financial incentives.

Vatica Health is one example. Vatica takes a physician-centric perspective, meaning the physician and clinical workflow are the central focal point of the program. With a keen focus on process simplification and efficiency, Vatica Health focuses on minimizing the amount of time and effort required of physicians. All aspects of the physician experience are designed to yield maximum value with the least amount of effort.

Vatica assigns licensed clinical nurses to each contracted practice. The nurses create a comprehensive, curated Vatica medical record for each patient encounter, presenting only conditions that are fully supported by clinical documentation. The result is that the physician is presented with a streamlined and prioritized list of conditions for review that they can complete at their convenience. Organizations participating in Vatica’s program realize incremental revenue, increases in the utilization of preventive health encounters (e.g., Annual Wellness Visits), and improvement in overall performance in value-based care arrangements.

There are also other ways to address the troubling dynamic of physician burnout and there are many resources currently available online. For example, the Well-Being Playbook 2.0—provided by the American Hospital Association (AHA) and AHA Physician Alliance, includes links to various webinars, podcasts, and case studies. The American Medical Association also provides a variety of articles that can help physicians experiencing burnout.

Taking the first step toward addressing physician burnout can have a long-lasting impact that benefits the entire healthcare ecosystem. Vatica will continue to do its part to raise awareness of this problem and lends its support to the collective, coordinated actions being taken across the industry to address the underlying causes of burnout.

About Vatica Health

Founded in 2011 as the first preventive services technology solution designed specifically for physicians, by physicians, Vatica Health remains a pioneer in physician-centric technology and support solutions that directly improve clinical outcomes, efficiency, and financial performance. Vatica Health deploys licensed, clinical nurses (on-site and virtually) that serve as extensions of your team at no cost to the practice. Practices retain all fee-for-service payments generated from the encounters, and they also receive incremental incentives for completion of the signed Vatica encounter.

The best part?

It’s a health-plan sponsored initiative. That means it’s completely free for practices to participate.

As practices continue to seek point-of-care solutions to better tell each patient’s story and improve outcomes, they need look no further than Vatica Health. Vatica Health is accelerating the transformation to value-based care by helping providers, health plans, and patients work together to achieve better outcomes. To learn more, visit https://vaticahealth.com/.

Don’t let chronic conditions be an afterthought when using telehealth

By Admin | February 22, 2021 | Provider, Risk Adjustment, Telehealth

If there’s one silver lining to COVID-19, it’s the rapid adoption of telehealth that enables physicians to take care of patients while also limiting the spread of the virus. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) even expanded its list of telehealth -covered services during the public health emergency, allowing physicians to render certain preventive care, evaluation and management of conditions, and other services without requiring patients to come into the office.

One unintended consequence?

When using telehealth, physicians may be less likely to capture chronic conditions that affect risk-adjusted payments. Why? Lack of time, new workflows, and a variety of other causes.

This is detrimental to risk adjustment for two reasons. First, it can affect the quality of patient care—particularly during care transition when documentation becomes critical. Patients who benefit the most from remote care during the pandemic are often those that tend to have multiple chronic conditions. However, it is still critically important to capture patient complexity through appropriate documentation and coding.

Second, it negatively affects physician reimbursement under capitated or risk-based payment models. When documentation and medical codes don’t paint an accurate picture of patient severity, physicians receive fewer resources for those patients who are inappropriately perceived to be less clinically complex. The same is true for government-sponsored payers.

The good news is that a comprehensive risk adjustment and quality solution can help by taking some of the administrative burden off physicians so they can concentrate on providing high-quality patient care. The first step, though, is to address common myths about telehealth in a value-based care environment.

Below, we address three myths about telehealth as well as strategies to help physicians depict a more accurate picture of patient severity, acuity, or complexity when using this technology.

Myth: ‘I only have time to focus on the acute problem during a telehealth visit. I can’t possibly capture chronic conditions as well.’

Truth: Although physicians are often pressed for time during an encounter, it only takes a few seconds to check in with the patient about the status of their chronic conditions. It can be as simple as asking the patient whether they are taking their medications as prescribed for each chronic condition.

Physicians can also participate in health-plan sponsored risk adjustment and quality of care initiatives that can help them report the quality of care they normally provide. These initiatives provide clinical and administrative support to ensure accurate and comprehensive documentation and coding so physicians can spend more time on direct patient care.

Myth: ‘It’s too difficult to provide an Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) via telehealth. Care quality will suffer.’

Truth: In a recent survey, 49% of physicians cite ‘diminished quality of care’ as a top reason why they haven’t provided a virtual consultation. However, decreased care quality with telehealth isn’t yet proven, and for some patients, it may be the only way to get them in the door—albeit a virtual one. The AWV is an opportune time to capture and manage chronic conditions. During COVID-19, this is more important than ever as these diagnoses may place patients at higher risk for developing complications if they were to contract the virus.

Deferred care during COVID-19 has become all too common. Four in 10 U.S. adults reported avoiding medical care because of concerns related to COVID-19. One recent survey found that patients with chronic conditions are less engaged and that fewer patients are seeking preventive care. This means chronic conditions could go undetected and unmanaged for months at a time. There may also be missed opportunities for routine vaccinations or early detection of new conditions, both of which could result in poor patient outcomes.

Health-plan sponsored risk adjustment and quality of care initiatives help physicians efficiently provide critical preventive care services without jeopardizing the time spent on patient care.

Myth: ‘Telehealth won’t help me succeed under value-based payment models. It’s too risky to embrace this new technology knowing that my revenue could suffer.’

Truth: Telehealth is in no way a barrier to value-based care. In fact, it enhances value by increasing patient access and providing physicians the platform to capture and address chronic conditions.

In fact, more than 75% of clinicians responding to a recent survey said telehealth enabled them to provide quality care for an array of conditions and situations: COVID-19, acute care, chronic disease management, hospital follow-up, care coordination, preventative care, and mental/behavioral health. Additionally 60% reported that telehealth has improved the health of their patients, and the majority would like to continue to offer telehealth visits following the pandemic.

With the help of health-plan sponsored clinical and administrative support, physicians can use telehealth to improve quality care reporting while also supporting revenue integrity through accurate and complete data capture.

How Vatica Supports Providers

Physicians providing care via telehealth need extra support. Our team deploys on-site or virtual clinical consultants with backgrounds as RNs, LPNs, or PAs that serve as extensions of your team at no cost to the practice to help surface important items to address with paitents in a virtual or in-office setting, such as chronic condition management. Practices retain all fee-for-service payments generated from patient encounters and also receive incentives for coding visits.

The best part? It’s a health-plan sponsored initiative. That means it’s completely free for practices to participate. Learn more about how Vatica can help your practice.

Telling the patient’s story during COVID-19: Primary care challenges and long-term solutions

By Vatica Health | February 1, 2021 | Provider, Risk Adjustment, Telehealth

When the COVID-19 pandemic first struck, small independent primary care physicians were among the first providers to feel the impact. Patients cancelled appointments out of fear or necessity. Practices shut down temporarily to comply with shelter-at-home orders. As with many businesses, some practices eventually closed their doors for good because they simply couldn’t weather the storm financially. As the pandemic raged on, even larger, system-owned practices began to feel the wrath of COVID-19. Today—nearly a year later—entire health systems both large and small are feeling the strain.

Despite these unprecedented challenges, providers have tried not to lose sight of the most important goal: to provide high-quality patient care that drives optimal health outcomes and supports the transition to value-based care.

How can they do that?

Ensure accurate and complete documentation that reflects each patient’s clinical story. Document all current and emerging chronic conditions to the highest degree of specificity. Administer all age-based or seasonal screenings and vaccines that affect health and functioning, or refer patients for these services. Encourage preventive care and behavior modification to support a healthy lifestyle.

As we look ahead, organizations must confront an ongoing shortage of primary care physicians and nurses, as well as a virus-fearful patient population that may be difficult to engage in preventive health. The ‘old way’ of addressing gaps in patient care (like during an in-person visit with a physician) probably isn’t realistic anymore. It’s time to rethink strategies and address ongoing challenges.

Following are four challenges every healthcare organization must address, along with potential solutions to ensure high-quality patient care and revenue integrity.

Challenge #1: There aren’t enough physicians working in the practice setting.

An increase in hospital admissions—including admissions for patients with COVID-19—has forced health systems in rural and urban areas to re-deploy employed physicians and their nursing staff into acute care units. With fewer providers working in the office setting comes diminished appointment availability, including appointments for preventive health. This comprehensive annual visit is a critical opportunity to identify conditions that warrant ongoing monitoring. Without this touchpoint, care gaps can easily occur. The patient’s clinical story remains largely untold, and performance in value-based care arrangements may be jeopardized.

Solution: Think outside the box.

It’s understandable that physicians are distracted by other responsibilities; however, it’s also critical that they not lose sight of reviewing patients’ chronic conditions annually. That’s where they may need help. Some have contemplated hiring a physician assistant, for example, but are hesitant to make the financial investment out of fear that patient volume won’t cover the person’s salary and benefits. The good news is that there may be other options. For example, the practice could consider participating in a health-plan sponsored program that provides clinical and administrative staff for support. Going this route prevents care gaps, reduces overhead costs, and slows the spread of COVID-19. As an added benefit, there is often a financial incentive offered for completing patient encounters.

Challenge #2: Some patients still fear coming into the office.

Even despite stringent COVID-19 protocols, many patients continue to feel that the risk of coming into the office for preventive and routine care isn’t worth it. Four out of every 10 U.S. adults say they’ve avoided medical care because of concerns related to COVID-19.

Solution: Telehealth (with patient tutorials).

Telehealth helps practices keep patients happy and safe. However, there’s one caveat: it might take a little effort to help older adults learn to use this technology. More than a third of adults over age 65 face potential difficulties seeing their doctor via telemedicine. Proactively educating patients on how to use the telehealth solution and supporting their utilization can go a long way in terms of engagement. Administrative support often includes the use of Patient Engagement Representatives to contact patients to schedule appointments, deliver appointment reminders, and educate them on telehealth tools.

Challenge #3: Patients may no longer prioritize preventive health.

During COVID-19, many patients have deferred routine and preventive care. Perhaps they lost their insurance or faced another type of financial hardship—or the physician they always saw is no longer available. Some may have even gravitated toward the idea that they don’t need a doctor because they’re able to self-diagnose using the internet. Routine and preventive health falls to the bottom of the priority list, which is especially critical for patients diagnosed with chronic conditions.

Solution: Educate patients.

Practices must be able to convey the value of preventive and routine health services. Preventive care helps physicians diagnose diseases earlier, which often results in better outcomes and lower cost of care. Routine care prevents exacerbations, reduces symptoms, and improves quality of life. Practices must be able to engage patients on a personal level while also explaining that many of these services may be covered at 100%. This education empowers patients to make the best decisions for their health.

Challenge #4: Physicians are burned out, and revenue is declining.

Forty-seven percent of family medicine physicians and 46% of internal medicine physicians say they’re burned out, and it isn’t surprising why: long and busy workdays, time pressures, and ever-increasing administrative demands. COVID-19 has exacerbated this dynamic and led to a sharp decline in patient volume that has threatened the financial viability of many PCP practices.

Solution: A comprehensive Risk Adjustment and Quality solution.

Participating in health-plan sponsored risk adjustment and quality of care initiatives can help PCPs who are struggling to close revenue and care gaps. PCPs are already overworked and dealing with the cascading effects of COVID-19. It’s critical to find a partner that provides dedicated clinical and administrative support services to reduce administrative burdens, engage patients, and improve health outcomes. The result? Increased utilization of preventive health encounters and improved financial and clinical performance in value-based care arrangements.

How Vatica Supports Health Systems

As practices continue to seek point-of-care solutions to better tell each patient’s story, they need look no further than Vatica Health. We’re accelerating the transformation to value-based care by helping providers, health plans, and patients work together to achieve better outcomes. Our team deploys on-site or virtual clinical consultants with backgrounds as RNs, LPNs, or PAs that serve as extensions of your team at no cost to the practice. Practices retain all fee-for-service payments generated from patient encounters and also receive incentives for coding visits.

The best part? It’s a health-plan sponsored initiative. That means it’s completely free for practices to participate. Learn more about how Vatica can help your practice.

How to succeed in value-based care with service-enabled technology

By Vatica Health | January 7, 2021 | Provider, Risk Adjustment, Value-Based Care

More and more primary care providers (PCPs) are entering value-based care arrangements, whether by choice or mandate. In fact, CMS hopes to have 100% of Medicare Advantage payments linked to alternative payment models by 2025.

With this new approach to care, it’s important for PCPs to understand the impact that risk adjustment and quality of care has on value-based care performance and assess whether their organization has the building blocks in place to ensure success. Unfortunately, PCPs are frequently impeded by insufficient time, data, and staffing resources, which prevents them from reaching their clinical and financial goals under these emerging payment systems. However, PCPs who address these gaps by evaluating their practices’ strengths, opportunities, and partnership needs are well-positioned to thrive in value-based care.

Risk Adjustment and Quality of Care

As we move to value-based care, providers will be compensated based on efficiently delivering better results—not more procedures. Value-based care is designed to incentivize providers to improve outcomes in a cost-efficient manner. In other words, payment and quality of care are inextricably linked.

Two critical components to any value-based care arrangement are risk adjustment and quality reporting. This is because success in value-based care depends on accurately assessing the clinical needs of your population, and reporting these needs so that your payments will be sufficient to deliver appropriate care.

The challenge is that risk adjustment and quality reporting is labor intensive and is predicated on a complex set of rules, which frequently becomes a stumbling block for practices. Because of the complex payment methodology associated with risk adjustment, appropriate coding specificity is needed to accurately report chronic conditions. Without this specificity, plans and PCPs may end up with artificially low patient risk scores, resulting in insufficient funds to deliver adequate levels of care. Similarly, PCPs must adhere to the reporting standards for quality gap closures, and deviation can result in sub-standard outcomes.

For practices that lack specialized coding and quality technology, as well as properly trained staff, keeping up with these activities is a significant challenge.

What to Look for in Service-Enabled Technology

More often than not, PCPs attempt to solve these challenges with the aid of technology. However, as many PCPs know, the implementation of new software can create more problems than it was intended to solve. With office staff burnout at an all-time high, it is important to make sure that any new tools being utilized are supporting, not hindering, the team’s success.
What should PCPs be looking for when selecting the right partner? Let us look at some common quality reporting and risk adjustment challenges and how your technology should address them.

Provider Documentation Support
Challenge: Due to lack of coding expertise and ineffective technology, provider documentation is often not specific enough to support the ICD-10 coding necessary to accurately risk adjust a patient. Many common chronic conditions, such as major depressive disorder, specified arrhythmias, staged chronic kidney disease, and others, can only be risk adjusted when specified in physician documentation.
Solution: This level of detail can be achieved with a combination of clinical decision support, computer-assisted diagnostic coding technology, and supplemental clinical staff. Because technology alone cannot eliminate these challenges, augmenting existing staff with clinical resources to supplement these technology solutions, commonly known as service-enabled technology, is emerging as a gold standard.

Coding Expertise
Challenge: Risk adjustment payment methodology is highly complex. While PCPs may have medical coders on staff, they often lack the specialized skills needed to code to appropriate specificity. To bridge this gap, health plans deploy vendors to perform either home assessments or retrospective chart reviews, which can cause patient and provider abrasion.
Solution: PCPs can avoid these pitfalls with EMR-integrated technology that is powered by algorithms that do the heavy lifting by surfacing the most specific and relevant codes. Because an accurate and complete data set for each patient is critical, providers should consider supplemental clinical staff to support provider documentation with the EMR to synthesize it with health plan data.

Seamless Quality Reporting
Challenge: Quality of care programs can be challenging for providers in value-based care arrangements. Providers often lack the data and tools to support the reporting and activities associated with these measures.
Solution: Providers should consider solutions that specialize in quality reporting to foster greater communication and collaboration with health plans. New service-enabled technology solutions change the way health plans and providers are working together to improve financial and clinical results.
In a nutshell, technology alone is insufficient. Providers need both powerful EMR-integrated technology wrapped with clinical and administrative support to drive superior value-based care performance. PCPs do not need another application to log into—they need a team of experts behind the screen helping the technology work for them.

To learn more about Vatica’s PCP-centric solution for Risk Adjustment Coding and Quality of Care, click here.

Patient care in an ongoing pandemic: Challenges and solutions

By Vatica Health | November 6, 2020 | Provider, Risk Adjustment

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we braced for a few turbulent weeks, which has since evolved into months of uncertainty with no end in sight. No one anticipated the extended timeline or the effects it would have on the healthcare ecosystem, especially on primary and preventive care. Primary care practices (PCPs) continue to be burdened by the daily challenges caused by the pandemic. Visit volumes may be rebounding, but some populations are still deferring routine or planned care. Revenue is ticking northward again, but value-based care outcomes may be lagging. Preventive care is back at the forefront, but months of unmanaged conditions are catching up.

Fortunately, there is good news. As primary care practices continue to weather the ups and downs of the pandemic, there are some solutions available to help them navigate these ever-changing tides.

While some of the challenges PCPs faced early in the pandemic have faded into the background, others have emerged or settled to become a new commonplace element of patient care.

Navigating telehealth

Challenge: In the first few months of the pandemic, stay at home orders and practice closures were widespread, resulting in a dramatic decline in patient visits. Providers experienced record-low visit volumes in March and April, with outpatient visits declining nearly 60% by early April. Telehealth boomed to address this unprecedented disruption to the healthcare system. A Phreesia report found telehealth activity peaked at 13.8% of total patient visits in mid-April. While the proliferation of telehealth was a game changer during the early days of the pandemic, it cannot replace the treatments and procedures which require an in-office visit—especially for seniors with several chronic conditions who may not have the ability to leverage telehealth technology.

Solution: Telehealth is a great way to extend the PCPs’ reach, but it’s not a panacea. Telehealth is an efficient and cost-effective way for providers to deliver certain types of care, address routine questions, and maintain patient engagement. It can also be part of a comprehensive strategy to improve quality of care and coding. Moving forward, a hybrid of both in-person and telehealth care will be needed to meet the needs of a practice’s varied patient population.

Emphasizing chronic care management

Challenge: The pandemic has precipitated a decline in in-person ambulatory care and, as a result, research suggests that there has been a decline in chronic disease management. Neglecting care management for chronic conditions has a domino effect, as today’s missed routine visit can lead to a future hospitalization. Performance on value-based care arrangements may also be impacted.

Solution: Patients with chronic conditions must receive routine care to avoid an acute care crisis. The situation is especially critical for seniors, since more than two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaries have two or more chronic conditions, which exacerbates the risks associated with COVID-19. To actively manage your patients’ chronic care conditions, providers should consider a combination of in-office visits, telehealth, and remote patient monitoring devices.

Creating patient engagement

Challenge: Even after the initial shock of the pandemic has dissipated, many practices remain short-staffed, resource constrained, and under considerable financial pressure. This has made it difficult for providers to maintain a high-level of patient engagement, which is difficult under the best of circumstances.

Solution: More than ever, PCPs must be vigilant about communicating with patients so preventive measures and routine care don’t fall by the wayside. Integrating new methods of communication with traditional outreach can help improve patient engagement and visit volume.

Treading unstable revenue

Challenge: While patient volume has rebounded for many practices, the impact of lost revenue remains a formidable setback. An October Primary Care Collaborative survey revealed that only one-fifth of PCPs said revenue is within 10% of pre-COVID-19 levels.

Solution: PCPs should be mindful of opportunities that improve their clinical and financial performance, such as participating in health-plan sponsored quality of coding and care initiatives. Risk adjustment has often been considered a problem only payers look to solve, but by implementing a quality of care and coding solution, providers can achieve many important and desirable clinical and financial benefits.

The Path Forward: A Turnkey Solution

PCPs need turnkey solutions to help them optimize their practices during these unprecedented times. Vatica Health’s solution leverages a team of expert clinicians and powerful technology to help you—the PCP—optimize outcomes and performance. Our platform is easy to use, EMR-agnostic, and designed for point-of-care use. The process is simple and won’t interrupt your workflow.

Vatica provides on-site or telehealth clinicians who handle 90%+ of the work, so you can focus on patient care.
The Vatica platform synthesizes health plan, EMR, and patient-reported data to create a comprehensive view of the patient and applies advanced algorithms to facilitate enhanced diagnostic coding.
Vatica’s teams assist with patient engagement and administrative tasks.
Post-visit, you review relevant codes and sign the Vatica encounter—all in less than 10 minutes.
Our team of AAPC CRC™ certified clinical coders review 100% of coding and documentation for completeness and accuracy.

At Vatica, we take our role as a PCP-centric solution provider seriously. We are dedicated to improving coding accuracy, quality of care, patient engagement, and ultimately your clinical and financial performance. We are prepared, and willing, to support your practice through this global pandemic and into the future.

Improving quality of care and coding: The road less traveled to value-based care

By Vatica Health | September 8, 2020 | Provider, Risk Adjustment, Value-Based Care

Q&A with Vatica Health Co-Founder, Dr. Averel Snyder

At Vatica, we pride ourselves on being a company founded by physicians for physicians. Dr. Averel Snyder, a cardiothoracic surgeon, cofounded Vatica in 2011 after becoming frustrated with the mounting challenges physicians were facing. He set out to create a unique PCP-centric model that places providers in the driver’s seat of improving both quality of care documentation and practice revenue. We recently spoke with Dr. Snyder to discuss why he started Vatica and how risk adjustment and quality initiatives fit into broader, and timelier, industry issues including value-based care, the role of the PCP, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are not a lot of companies that solely focus on enabling physicians to perform risk adjustment coding and quality of care initiatives. What inspired that for Vatica?

It’s a funny story. Steve, my co-founder, and I initially started Vatica nearly a decade ago to enable physicians to more efficiently deliver the newly created Medicare Annual Wellness Visit. We knew that once we helped providers improve care and practice revenue, we could offer more comprehensive solutions. A couple of years later, I was attending a healthcare conference, listening to the CEO of a home assessment company boast about the benefits of his organization versus alternative methods of capturing diagnostic codes for the purpose of risk adjustment. He stated emphatically that their model was the best method for optimizing risk adjustment coding and stratifying patient risk, which enabled their health plan clients to accurately predict the costs on which their capitated payments are based. As he spoke, I felt myself becoming more frustrated by the minute because his claims seemed unfounded.

Immediately, I thought, this isn’t fair or accurate for a few reasons. First, PCPs are inappropriately being cut out of the financial and care loop. Second, it’s not in the patients’ best interest to be seen by a clinician with whom they have no relationship with and who does not have access to their complete medical record. Third, I wondered how non-PCP affiliated nurses were closing clinical and quality care gaps.

I went home and began to research the Medicare Advantage industry and quickly found that my concerns were justified—CMS also began to scrutinize the value of home assessments that failed to improve care and outcomes due to the lack of integration with the PCP.

I had the proverbial light bulb moment. It struck me that we should empower physicians to use a simple interface to perform risk adjustment coding and capture quality of care data in a way that also improves their practice’s financial performance. I knew this could address an important pain point that most physicians feel—being overworked and underpaid. Plus, I knew that the treating physicians could do this work with greater efficiency and quality, leading to improved patient outcomes.

Fortunately, this insight, unlike many of my other entrepreneurial ideas, proved accurate, and nearly a decade later we have empowered thousands of PCPs to “take back” risk adjustment assessments. In doing so, we’ve helped improve outcomes and generated tens of millions of dollars for our provider network.

What makes Vatica’s solution different?

As a busy practicing physician for over two decades, I think I have a good sense of what frustrates providers—too many administrative burdens, not enough time, and declining income. We designed our solution with these frustrations in mind. We provide dedicated clinical support services to reduce administrative burdens, we negotiate health plan incentives to enhance PCP revenue, and improve quality by increasing the use of preventive services and helping to close care gaps. It’s a win-win-win—providers, health plans, and patients all benefit.

Why is it important to put PCPs at the center of risk adjustment?

I feel strongly that the PCP should be at the center of care. The treating PCP and their staff—not some randomly assigned clinician—is best suited to have the most efficient and effective face-to-face encounter with the patient. Given their relationship with the patient and access to all clinical information in their EMR, they are the most appropriate clinician to accurately document and code clinical conditions and close care gaps leading to better outcomes.

Talk to us about how Vatica helps PCPs succeed in value-based care.

Value-based care is about efficiently providing the highest quality of care to improve outcomes. There are a number of studies that demonstrate physicians in value-based care programs provide higher quality of care. Unfortunately, many PCPs lack the technology, expertise, staff, time, and other resources to thrive in value-based care. Vatica addresses this issue head-on. Unlike a lot of other solutions, Vatica is not here to make more work—we actually do 90% of the work for PCPs.

Vatica’s solution not only facilitates risk adjustment documentation and coding—but also enables PCPs to close gaps in care and increase the utilization of preventive services which are critical to improving outcomes. Powered by our technology platform, PCPs accurately capture all the active medical conditions with the associated documentation for clinical validation in the medical record. Vatica’s clinical consultants leverage all available data to create an accurate and complete view of the patient—the key to improving outcomes and performance in value-based care.

Why are risk adjustment and quality of care initiatives important to primary care providers?

Value-based care is designed to incentivize providers to improve outcomes in a cost-efficient manner. Finances and quality of care are inextricably linked. Success in value-based care depends on accurately assessing the needs of your population so that your payments will be sufficient to deliver appropriate care. And for PCPs, this should be an urgent initiative since each year alternative payment models shift more risk to providers. I’ve heard providers say, “When value-based care comes, then I will pay attention to risk adjustment.” But, then it’s too late. The CMS data collection lags approximately three years, so your allocated resources for patient care in 2021 may be dependent on your coding and documentation in 2018. The time to focus on it is now.

What are the compliance risks for PCPs and health plans with other risk adjustment and quality of care solutions?

In a standard risk adjustment data validation audit for a health plan, a meaningful percentage of the submitted diagnosis codes will be unsubstantiated in the medical record. Most of the approaches to risk adjustment are not meeting the new standard, which requires clinical validation. As a physician, it was important for me to design a solution that improved efficiency and mitigated compliance risk for providers. To accomplish this goal, we aggregate all available clinical data from the EMR and present all active medical conditions and their associated documentation for clinical validation to the treating provider. The provider is then responsible for selecting an appropriate ICD-10 code and completing “TAMPER” documentation. Then, as a fail-safe, after the provider e-signs the visit, we ensure that 100% of the codes are reviewed for completeness and accuracy by our team of AAPC CRC™ certified nurses, prior to submitting the codes to the health plan. We also deliver comprehensive provider ICD-10 coding and documentation training, which I personally provide and oversee.

What keeps you up at night in the current situation, with all the changes and disruptions in care during the pandemic?

PCP practices, particularly those who serve seniors, have endured some serious challenges. Reimbursement models are changing, and the new models demand vigilant documentation, accurate coding, additional practice resources, and subject matter expertise lacking by most physicians. At the same time, health plans are struggling to maximize risk adjusted revenue to ensure that seniors, who are the most vulnerable and costly patients, are receiving quality care and improved outcomes. Fortunately, CMS approved telehealth for a variety of encounters, including risk adjustment, and in-office patient volume has also started to bounce back from the post-pandemic decline. I think CMS will have to continue to adapt and make changes to the Medicare Advantage HCC model to account for the missed outpatient care during the pandemic. I am concerned about the increasing demands and worries of the PCPs, but I am optimistic about our ability to be a true partner, and subject matter expert, to help them succeed in this everchanging environment.

To learn more about how Vatica helps providers, watch our quick overview video.

Telehealth-enabled risk adjustment: A solution to closing revenue and care gaps

By Vatica Health | July 23, 2020 | Provider, Telehealth

Providers have exerted a herculean effort over the last few months to minimize the human cost of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, the unfortunate irony of these efforts, to keep patients and communities safe, is the negative impact on the group considered to be the linchpin of the healthcare ecosystem: primary care physicians (PCPs).

A recent Harvard study estimates visit cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic will cost practices, in 2020, an average of $67,000 in annual revenue per physician. Across the entire primary care system, the loss adds up to nearly $15 billion. Notably, the study estimates that the impact could more than double if COVID-19 telemedicine policies are not sustained.

PCPs and the primary care ecosystem can’t afford such a massive blow, which would threaten the viability of thousands of providers. When we emerge from the acute phase of the pandemic, it will be more essential than ever to have a robust primary care system to meet the pent up healthcare needs—especially among the aging population with multiple chronic conditions.

The study’s lead author, Dr. Bruce Landon, told the Boston Globe, “If we fail to pay attention to [PCPs], many of them are at risk for going away.” Paying attention, in this case, means continued legislative support for telehealth and care delivery flexibility. It also means giving providers the tools and solutions to maintain their quality of care and create new sources of revenue. It is particularly important for PCPs to keep their senior patients—the population at greatest risk for falling through the telemedicine cracks—engaged in ongoing routine and preventive care.

Starting in March, CMS took unprecedented action to expand telehealth services and benefits. Among the key changes has been CMS approval of audio and video telehealth as a means to gather diagnostic data for purposes of risk adjustment—a move that has been critical for Medicare Advantage (MA) plans to keep up with risk adjustment and quality of care initiatives.

For PCPs struggling to close revenue and care gaps, performing health-plan sponsored risk adjustment via telehealth represents a great opportunity. “The temporary expansion of telehealth is a tremendous opportunity—if it’s utilized,” said our CEO Hassan Rifaat, MD in an article authored for Fierce Healthcare. “Because telehealth is new for most providers and for much of the Medicare population…it is important to implement easy-to-use technology and efficient workflows,” he explained. “In these extraordinarily challenging times, it’s important to be creative and proactive to keep patients healthy and the system financially afloat.”

Participating in value-based arrangements, addressing gaps in care, and achieving strong clinical outcomes during this time is especially arduous for PCPs who are burdened with the operational, technical, resource, and practical challenges resulting from COVID-19. Vatica Health has developed a PCP-centric, workflow-agnostic solution that provides free clinical and administrative support, remote EMR access and connectivity, audio and video interface, member engagement, and other services to help providers thrive clinically and financially during these challenging times. Contact Vatica Health at info@vaticahealth.com to learn how we can support your practice.

Learn more about Vatica Health’s PCP-centric solution for risk adjustment to improve practice performance and patient experience.

Hope for a new normal in PCP practices post-COVID-19

By Vatica Health | June 25, 2020 | Provider

More than three months after the COVID-19 outbreak was declared a global pandemic states are now beginning to ease stay-at-home orders and lift restrictions. Plans to reopen introduce behavioral changes that ultimately create a “new normal,” or a new way of going about daily life, work, travel, and even healthcare routines.

Like other services deemed “essential,” primary care practices remained open for business during the COVID-19 pandemic, but business looked drastically different for healthcare providers. Many practices adopted telehealth, with exceptions for critical in-person care. We recently discussed the challenges PCPs faced due to COVID-19, which included a massive decline in patient volume, revenue, and a reduction in staff. We were hopeful this perfect storm would pass, and it is beginning to: primary care practices have largely resumed their standard hours of operation and are able to see patients for routine and preventive care. Even CMS Administrator, Seema Verma, is championing a return to routine care and recently penned an op-ed urging people to “get back to non-COVID healthcare.” Yet, to maintain volume and extend preventive care, it’s essential for PCPs to continue offering telehealth and other flexible workflows.

Patients, especially seniors, want to go back

Though it won’t happen overnight, the primary care setting is poised to rebound due to pent up demand. Patients need preventive and routine healthcare, and many prefer to be seen in person. This is especially true among older populations. A June 2020 William Blair Equity Research survey found that 80% of the patient visits cancelled or postponed due to COVID-19 are still needed and likely to be rescheduled. Surprisingly, the number of cancellations driven by fear of in-office COVID-19 exposure was lower in older populations than in younger ones. For the majority (63%) of seniors aged 65+, cancellations were driven by the logistical challenges of office closures and stay-at-home orders, among other reasons. Seniors generally have greater care needs and may be willing to return for care sooner, with the proper protocols to protect patient safety.

Continued telehealth usage

While this data provides some hope about the improvement in patient volume, the reality is, some patients will remain cautious about visiting their PCPs. Fortunately, many providers focused on developing and strengthening their telehealth infrastructure during the pandemic which will continue to serve them well in a post-pandemic world. Analysts expect heightened telehealth use to continue as new pockets of the coronavirus bubble up across the U.S.

With telehealth, providers can recoup lost revenue and bridge the gap between their “new normal” in-office volume and their pre-COVID-19 volume. Additionally, though some patients may be returning to the practice, some employees may not. Telehealth can also help equip practices that may be short-staffed with the tools and technology to provide quality care on a larger scale.

New federal legislation also signals that telehealth is being prioritized and will be permanent. Since April, the COVID-19 Telehealth Program, created by The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has doled out more than half of its allotted funding to help healthcare providers build or bolster their telehealth infrastructure and services. Additionally, CMS and commercial payers alike have responded favorably by making sweeping changes to telehealth restrictions, requirements, and reimbursement policies, including in the area of risk adjustment.

Adjusting to this “new normal” will require patience, but for PCPs that have weathered the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Whether patients are in the office or on the screen, PCPs can continue to leverage telehealth to generate revenue, help patients stay on track, and keep their practices financially stable in a post-pandemic environment.

To hear more from our team and Vatica Health PCPs using telehealth to improve their practice performance and patient experience, watch the on-demand webinar.

Optimizing real-time audio-video telehealth to boost your PCP practice in the pandemic

By Vatica Health | June 3, 2020 | Provider, Telehealth

We’ve said it before: primary care providers are facing the perfect storm sparked by COVID-19. There are fewer routine and preventive visits, revenue is down, and offices are short-staffed. Fortunately, there is a path forward.

Telehealth has skyrocketed and is becoming the most practical way of providing primary care during these uncertain times. However, despite the surge in telehealth popularity, PCPs are having trouble taking full advantage of the benefits that telehealth offers to boost their practices – especially among seniors.

In a recent on-demand webinar, Dr. Hassan Rifaat (Vatica Health’s CEO) and Daphney Vick (Vatica Health’s EVP, Operations) were joined by two primary care physicians that use Vatica Health’s solution. They shared their insights on how providers can leverage telehealth (especially real-time audio+video) to generate revenue, help patients stay on track with routine and preventive care, and keep their practices productive and financially viable. Below are a few highlights from the webinar.

Telehealth is here to stay

Providers have been quick to adapt to telehealth and, thanks to recent rulings, many PCPs plan to keep telehealth as an option post-pandemic after seeing the value that it can provide for routine care and reimbursable visits. Many health plans are also moving toward the permanent expansion of telehealth services.

But there is an important distinction between providing care using audio only – and more comprehensive telehealth as defined by CMS which requires real-time audio and video. While telephone-only may be satisfactory in certain circumstances, the key to maximizing telehealth is to ensure that it can also be used for risk adjustment, value-based care and other performance optimizing programs. For HCC coding in support of risk adjustment, CMS guidance states that PCPs’ telehealth options must be real-time audio-visual, and not just telephonic.

Real-time audio+video telehealth is not just better for the practice, it’s also better for patients. Imagine watching a movie versus just listening to it—there’s much more information to absorb, and it’s also more engaging. Patients agree: 62% of patients at MGH reported in a survey that the quality of care via video visits was the same as in-person visits.

Patients are already set up for success

While patient adoption of telehealth has been a hurdle for PCPs, some data shows that it’s catching on. Fifty-two percent of senior patients are willing to try telehealth, and many of them already have. Additionally, when asked about switching PCPs based on telehealth offerings, or lack thereof, the vast majority of seniors would rather stay with their own PCP. This is good news because there is a proliferation of telehealth service providers that are aggressively targeting your patients, making telehealth an important initiative to retain your patients.

In our webinar, family physician, Monica Ranaletta, DO, shared that the learning curve for video telehealth has been quick and easy. Once her patients have one video telehealth visit, even with another provider, the process becomes intuitive.

Also, on the webinar, Shanthi Rajendran, MD, and her colleague Sarah Boyer, PA, shared that they have been surprised at how equipped their senior patients have been for telehealth. Keeping up with the times and with their younger family members, many seniors already had the basic video tools in place to do audio-visual telehealth.

Taking the next steps with audio-video telehealth

Though patient adoption of telehealth is growing, it doesn’t just happen overnight and can take some time for providers to get the ball rolling and the process optimized.

On the webinar, the Vatica Health team, joined by Dr. Rajendran, Boyer, and Dr. Ranaletta, shared some key steps that providers can take to improve the use of telehealth for their patients and their practices, including:

Member engagement to drive participation and utilization
Educating patients about your practice’s telehealth options and use cases
Administrative functions to make telehealth an easy option for patients
Pre-visit tasks that help ensure patients are ready for appointments and show up for them
User experience and platform tips that help make telehealth clear and enjoyable
In-visit best practices for keeping patients engaged and improving their overall experience

Boyer shared that though this may seem like a lot to think about, she and Dr. Rajendran have found a rhythm and have successfully integrated telehealth into their operations. The experience is similar for Dr. Ranaletta, who estimates that 80% of her appointments are now via telehealth.

To hear more from our team and Vatica Health’s PCPs using telehealth to improve their practice performance and patient experience, watch the on-demand webinar.

COVID-19 primary care challenges and opportunities

By Vatica Health | May 5, 2020 | Provider, Telehealth

The coronavirus has created a unique and challenging dichotomy in healthcare—some physicians in acute care settings are overwhelmed with urgent patient needs and other providers in outpatient settings are experiencing a massive decrease in volume.

Understandably, much of the public attention is on the busiest parts of healthcare, and to those frontline caregivers at hospitals, urgent care centers, and nursing homes, we simply say, thank you.

On the other hand, primary care providers are at a standstill. For PCP practices, particularly those who serve seniors, the virus presents some daunting challenges: preventive and routine care is simply not taking place, volume and revenue have plummeted, and offices are short-staffed. These factors are creating a perfect storm that is literally jeopardizing the survival of PCP practices and putting the lives of patients suffering from chronic diseases at greater risk.

Fortunately, there is a path forward. Unlike much of the doom and gloom circulating the web, we won’t just focus on the magnitude of the problems – we’ll provide a creative solution.

Declining Patient Volume

Across the country, in-person clinical visits—the foundation of primary and preventive care—have decreased at an alarming rate. In a mid-April survey, PCPs reported that their volumes had plummeted by 65%, with seniors showing the sharpest drop in visits. Office closures and decreased volume are threatening the financial viability of PCPs, especially smaller and independent practices.

Declining Practice Revenue

With the rapid decrease in patient volume, practices are now facing a severe financial strain as their revenue follows a similar trajectory. While telehealth has helped PCPs replace some in-person visits, these interactions have not led to significant, reimbursable revenue yet. Though 96% of primary care visits authorized for Medicare beneficiaries are now eligible for telehealth reimbursement, inconsistent guidelines and poor member engagement have made it challenging for providers to take full advantage of telehealth. All of this is creating a stark new reality – only one third of PCPs feel confident that their practice has enough cash to continue operating for the next month.

Declining Member Engagement

The disparity between reimbursable telehealth visits and the PCPs’ ability to take advantage of them boils down to engagement. Telehealth appointments, unfortunately, are not being adopted at the same rate that in-person is being abandoned. Additionally, many of the Medicare telehealth waivers require real-time audio and video communication, and providers are finding it difficult to identify easy-to-use platforms for seniors that also integrate into their practices’ workflows.

Practices are Short-Staffed

During this time, PCPs are facing unprecedented business and staffing decisions. Four out of 10 PCPs recently reported having to reduce their staff headcount. Many others are on rotations to keep staff healthy or are accommodating whatever situations employees may be facing in their own families. This has led to a precarious situation. The PCPs, who were already overworked pre-pandemic, are now left to do the back-office work—scheduling, follow-up, billing, technology, and more—on top of visiting with the patients they can get through the virtual doors.

Increasing Risk for Seniors

Given seniors’ increased risk of developing more serious complications from COVID-19 illness, it is especially important to keep them physically isolated. The Catch-22 is that as the months tick by without proactively managing existing chronic conditions, their long-term risks of serious illness rise significantly. Furthermore, social isolation has been linked to decreased cognitive function, depression, cardiovascular disease, and many other health risks.

The Solution: A Risk Adjustment and Quality of Care Solution at the Point of Care

For many years, PCPs were led to believe that HCC coding in support of risk adjustment was best left to home assessment or other vendors not connected to the treating provider. Despite the many shortcomings of this approach—patient abrasion, no access to EMR or medical records, lack of follow-up care—PCPs reluctantly accepted these inferior methods because they lacked the tools, resources, and time to do this work themselves.

All that changed when Vatica Health pioneered a PCP-centric risk adjustment and quality of care solution supported by expert clinical teams with cutting-edge technology at the point of care. Vatica Health empowered PCPs to “take back” risk adjustment assessments, helping thousands of PCPs dramatically improve care and their financial performance. Then COVID-19 happened.

While CMS significantly expanded telehealth benefits in early March, it did not address the face-to-face requirement for risk adjustment. Fortunately, on April 10, the healthcare ecosystem exhaled a collective sigh of relief when CMS officially approved telehealth as a means of gathering risk adjustment data. And while that’s good news for providers and health plans, rolling out telehealth isn’t as simple as flipping a switch.

With all the challenges PCPs are facing, the last thing they need is another burden. PCPs need turnkey solutions to keep their practices running and their patients healthy. Vatica Health is here to help. We are proud to support your practice by offering clinical and administrative support to get patients back through your virtual doors, and to efficiently perform health plan sponsored risk adjustment and quality of care documentation, via telehealth.

We are a PCP-centric partner, and we are here to help you get through these challenging times.