February 7, 2020

Advocate Masthead

ACP Policy News

ACP Outlines Plan for Universal Health Care

ACP recommends implementing a single-payer or public option model to provide essential benefits and reduce administrative costs.


ACP Offers Recommendations for Reducing the Rising Cost of Health Care

Policy paper lays out strategies to reduce health care costs implemented through a universal health care system.


Advocacy in Action

Health IT Update: ACP Champions Efforts That Put Patients Before Paperwork

ACP members, staff participate in discussions on interoperability, patient privacy and workflow management.


Quick Hits

Now Available - 2019 Novel Coronavirus: A Physician's Guide from ACP

ACP has developed the following educational content that is freely available to the healthcare community as a public service of ACP in response to the Coronavirus outbreak.

  • Novel Coronavirus: A Physician's Guide. This online learning activity can be easily accessed on handheld devices and provides a clinical overview of infection control and patient care guidance.
  • Coronavirus: What the Clinician Needs to Know. This podcast was produced by Core IM in collaboration with ACP, and includes an interview with Dr. Christina Fiske, infectious diseases subspecialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

For these coronavirus education activities, ACP members may report their learning time for CME credit without charge. Please feel free to share these resources with others in the health care community.


Reminder: Upcoming Deadlines with CMS

Several deadlines for submissions to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) are quickly approaching:

  • Feb. 25- If you previously submitted a Letter of Intent to apply for CMS’ Direct Contracting Model, you must submit your application by this date. More information is available on the CMS website.
  • Mar. 2- Registration and attestation information for hospitals participating in the Medicare Promoting Interoperability Program is due.
  • Mar. 31- The 2019 MIPS data submission period closes. You can find more information about 2019 data requirements in the Quality Payment Program (QPP) Resource Library, and you can submit your data by logging in to your QPP account. 2019 performance will impact 2021 payments.

ACP's Physician and Practice Timeline can help you keep up-to-date on a variety of regulatory, payment, and delivery system changes and requirements. You can also sign up to receive text alerts to help keep you on top of upcoming deadlines and details. To sign up for these alerts, text ACPtimeline (no space) to 313131 from your mobile phone.


Updates to the Health IT Playbook

The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) has recently updated their Health IT Playbook. The Playbook is tool meant to help practices make the most of their health IT systems and reduce the burden of electronic health records (EHRs). The updated book now contains sections on reducing health IT burden; an interactive module to help clinicians understand how application programming interfaces (APIs) will help improve data exchange and interoperability; and, an updated security risk assessment tool to help meet HIPAA requirements. The Playbook can be found on the ONC website.


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