Excessive administrative tasks that are not central to direct patient care can lead to delayed or missed patient care, clinician dissatisfaction and workplace burnout. The ACC understands that administrative burdens facing clinicians can be both externally driven by other stakeholders and internally initiated by the medical practice or healthcare system. ACC members regularly highlight Electronic Health Records (EHRs), Prior Authorization and Payment and Quality Measurement among the top burdens.

Prior Authorization and Payment

The ACC supports standardized prior authorization requirements in accordance with national clinically supported guidelines and criteria developed by medical societies; streamlining documentation requirements (e.g., reduce the number of mandatory evaluation and management (E/M) documentation elements or quantity of information necessary for Family and Medical Leave Act forms); simplifying coding guidelines across clinical care settings, including increased alignment with standardized coding requirements and clinical documentation among payers; and improving patient access to timely and appropriate care by working with all stakeholders to reduce insurer-denials of physician-recommended services.

The College works closely with payers, its partner cardiovascular societies and other stakeholders to advance solutions to prior authorization and payment, including legislation and innovative pilot programs. It is also part of the Regulatory Relieve Coalition, a group of eight medical specialty societies.

Visit the Prior Authorization Hub for more information and reporting tools. Check out the AUC Program Hub for more information on AUC and the federal program.

Electronic Health Records

The ACC believes EHR workflow designs should be optimized to increase operational efficiency and productivity while continuing to improve quality care. Additionally, the College is committed to advocating for adoption of consensus methods and standards that allow effortless data transmission, extraction, interpretation and manipulation to ensure interoperability on all medical devices and platforms.

The College regularly provides comments on federal and/or state rules and legislation on EHRs and data interoperability and security.

Quality Measurement

The ACC advocates for the adoption of relevant, standardized, actionable, evidence-based quality measures based on clinician medical specialties/subspecialties, as well as the promotion of transparent and timely exchange of robust and meaningful measurement data from government and payer programs.

In addition, the College supports streamlining and prioritizing quality measures across government and payer programs, as well as minimizing the operational burden of quality management programs. Visit CVQuality.ACC.org for more information on ACC's NCDR Registries, data and public reporting, and more.

Stay up to date on the latest news and actions in all three of these areas by following @Cardiology on Twitter using #ACCAdvocacy, subscribing to the weekly Advocate e-newsletter, and bookmarking ACC.org/Advocacy in your browser.