Welcome to your daily briefing on healthcare developments in Alaska. Today we're covering 5 key stories including updates on alaska healthcare headlines, background & context. Let's dive in.
2 stories
In a letter dated December 4, 2018, for those providers not already enrolled with another State Medicaid Agency or Medicare, CMS waived certain screening requirements so Alaska may provisionally, temporarily, enroll the providers.
Relevant to healthcare professionals operating in AK.
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Relevant to healthcare professionals operating in AK.
Reach healthcare professionals
3 stories
Across most payors, the top-five denial reasons account for over 80% of prior-auth rejections: missing clinical documentation, wrong CPT/HCPCS code, service not in benefit plan, step-therapy not completed, and ordering provider not on the patient's plan. The same five repeat across plans because they are the easiest to deny on automation.
Practices that build a five-line pre-submission checklist around these reasons typically cut prior-auth denials by 40-60% within a quarter. The fix is process, not appeals capacity.
Three application defects routinely delay payor enrollment: incomplete work-history explanations for any gap over 30 days, a malpractice carrier-history that does not reconcile with the explanation, and CAQH attestation that has lapsed. Each forces a back-and-forth with the credentialing committee.
A new clinician without active payor enrollment cannot bill for covered services for most plans. Each month of delay is foregone revenue that does not retroactively recover.
The MIPS cost performance category is calculated retrospectively by CMS using attributed Medicare claims; clinicians cannot directly affect what is attributed. The two attribution methods (TPCC and MSPB) capture different beneficiary cohorts. Practices that try to "manage" cost without understanding which patients are attributed to which clinician typically waste effort.
Cost is now 30% of the MIPS final score — the largest single category. Misunderstanding attribution is the leading cause of unfavorable payment adjustments in the next cycle.
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