With the public health emergency and the impact of Covid on the overall workforce, we’ve all become even more familiar with terms such as “The Great Resignation” and “toxic culture”. Especially in the overburdened healthcare industry, with many clinical and support areas experiencing shortages of employees or shifts in employee responsibilities, the topic of workplace culture has become even more critical.

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.

The Great Resignation is a term with which we as society are all too familiar, and physician practices are definitely not exempt from the sting of The Great Resignation. Throughout the pandemic, healthcare workers (among others) were heralded as heroes, with many public displays of support and care as we all banded together to get through something none of us have ever seen before. Doctors, nurses, and practice staff were showered with support and kindness, sent letters and cards, and were generally appreciated.

The Extreme and Uncontrollable Circumstances (EUC) adjustment from CMS, also known as Covid protection, has now expired, which means that the overall star ratings for health plans will not be adjusted to account for Covid. There was an overall decline in year over year star ratings over the last two years, with the national average star rating declining from 4.37 in calendar year 2021 to 4.15 in 2022, a decline of 0.22.