In case you missed the news: The Amazon acquisition of One Medical officially closed on February 22. In one of our recent newsletters, we talked about Amazon’s entrance into the medical world through Amazon Clinic–which provides quick treatments for common conditions in 20 states.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have advanced value based care significantly in the last several years, and in a somewhat expected, yet bold move in October 2021, specifically said that they expect all traditional Medicare beneficiaries to be treated by a provider in a value-based care model by 2030. CMS rarely uses such superlative terms (all traditional Medicare beneficiaries), and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Innovation Center (CMMI) has five stated strategic objectives to achieve this massive undertaking.

It’s the beginning of a new year, so you’ll be hearing a lot about Medicare risk coding and the importance of risk coding. You’ll most likely hear the same story from many different sources - beginning January 1, those patients with amputations suddenly have limbs grow back and patients with certain conditions no longer have those conditions. You as practice leaders and physicians are told by multiple sources about how important capturing appropriate condition coding for your patients is.

The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) has developed a list of metrics and measures they consider pertinent to the assessment of quality in the delivery of healthcare based on access, availability, effectiveness, and outcomes