APMA News - November/December 2017 - 60

IT Consultant
By James R. Christina, DPM, and
Dyane Tower, DPM, MPH, MS

How to Use the APMA Registry
APMA has developed a registry that is a CMS-approved
Qualified Clinical Data Registry (QCDR) for 2017. Below are
answers to some questions you may have about how an APMA
member can use the APMA Registry.
n How do I sign up for the APMA Registry?
Visit www.apma.org/registry and click on the blue "Register
Today" button. Once you are on the APMA Registry Access
Request page, enter basic information about yourself and
your practice, including NPI number and TIN number. You
will also indicate how you plan to report-as an individual
or group.
After you complete the registry access request form, you
will see a pop-up screen to complete and sign a Business
Associate/Data Use Agreement. This agreement is a necessary component of HIPAA compliance.
n After I have completed all the forms-what next?
As far as the registry is concerned, you do not have to do
anything else at this time. You just carry out whatever components of MIPS you are planning to participate in (Quality,
Advancing Care Information [ACI], and Clinical Practice
Improvement Activities [CPIAs]). You must complete those
activities during 2017, but the registry does not report the
activities until the first quarter of 2018.
Sometime after January 1, 2018, you will receive an
email from APMA about how to attest for ACI and CPIAs
(also referred to as Improvement Activities). There will be
instructions about how to access your dashboard page for
the APMA Registry and how you attest for each component.
For ACI, you will provide information from your EHR for
each of the objectives or measures you are attesting to for
2017 MIPS ACI participation. For example, if you choose to
report the patient-specific education measure, your EHR
should give you a report for that measure on how many
patients were eligible (denominator) and how many patients you did the measure on (numerator). When you select that measure in the attestation portion of the APMA
Registry, it will ask you for the numbers-numerator and
denominator. Other objectives (e.g., security risk analysis)
will simply require a yes or no answer.
Follow the same process for Improvement Activities-
click on the attestation button on your APMA Registry
dashboard and then select the CPIAs you performed.
n What about the Quality component of MIPS?
To report the Quality measures for MIPS, your EHR must
be integrated with the APMA Registry. To date, the only
60 APMA News November/December 2017

integrated EHR is MediTouch/NextGen Healthcare (formerly HealthFusion). If you use the MediTouch/NextGen
Healthcare EHR, APMA will notify MediTouch once you
have completed your APMA Registry registration, and the
data on the Quality measures you have selected through
your MediTouch EHR will be transmitted to the APMA
Registry. You will be able to access your APMA Registry
dashboard to monitor your progress on the Quality measures you selected once the data is transferred. You do not
have to do anything to transmit the data to APMA; this
process will be completed by the interface between MediTouch and the APMA Registry. The APMA Registry will
then submit this information to CMS in the first quarter
of 2018 for the Quality component of MIPS. However, you
still need to go into the APMA Registry and complete
the attestation for ACI and CPIA if you desire to have
these components of MIPS submitted by the registry on
your behalf.
n Can I still submit the Quality component of MIPS even if
my EHR is not integrated with the APMA Registry?
This process cannot be achieved through the APMA Registry if your EHR is not integrated, but there are multiple other options to submit the Quality portion of MIPS. You can
do the claims method, you can use a registry other than the
APMA Registry, or if your EHR has the capability, you can
submit from your EHR to CMS directly. Just remember, all
of the quality components (measures) must be submitted by
the same method.
n I don't have an EHR. Can I still use the APMA Registry?
Yes, you can. Improvement Activities can be reported
through the APMA Registry. This reporting is done by attestation-in other words, you simply select the Improvement
Activities you performed and attest to them on your APMA
Registry dashboard. Again, you must complete the Improvement Activities in 2017, but you attest to them through the
registry in 2018.
n Is there a deadline to sign up for the APMA Registry?
Yes, for the 2017 MIPS performance year, the deadline
to sign up with the APMA Registry is Friday, December
15, 2017.
n

Contact Dr. Christina at jrchristina@apma.org, and
contact Dr. Tower at detower@apma.org.

http://www.apma.org/registry

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of APMA News - November/December 2017