The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) launched the “Patients over Paperwork” initiative with the aim to “cut the red tape” and reduce burdensome regulations from health care. Through “Patients over Paperwork,” CMS established an internal process to evaluate and streamline regulations with a goal to reduce unnecessary burden, to increase efficiencies, and to improve the beneficiary experience.
In carrying out this internal process, CMS is moving the needle and removing regulatory obstacles that get in the way of physicians spending time with their patients. Check out a quick video that explains the highlights of the “Patients over Paperwork” program.
- Targeting Medical Review (Targeted Probe and Educate)
- Deprioritizing Certain Providers from Medical Review (Medical Review Reduction Pilot)
- Simplifying and Clarifying Documentation Requirements
- Creating Detailed Denial Reason Statements
- Posting Proposed Recovery Audit Review Contractor (RAC) Review Topics
- Creating Clinical Templates and Data Elements
- Facilitating Electronic Medical Documentation Interoperability.
Each one of the bulleted items listed above has corresponding templates, fact sheets, and other useful tools on the Reducing Provider Burden page of the CMS website.
According to CMS Administrator Seema Verma, “…we are moving the agency to focus on patients first. To do this, one of our top priorities is to ease regulatory burden that is destroying the doctor-patient relationship. We want doctors to be able to deliver the best quality care to their patients. The entire CMS team is committed to doing our part to make sure caring professionals can do their job without the burden of unnecessary requirements,” added Verma.
Physicians are encouraged to contact CMS through the “Patients over Paperwork” portal if you find requirements complicated, repetitive or unnecessary. Submit your suggestions to ReducingProviderBurden@cms.hhs.gov to help them simplify requirements and put a stop to administrative burden.