Connecting The Dots of Healthcare

Why indeed?

The government had a perfectly good name, HCFA, (hic-faah), to descibe the Healthcare Financing Administration.

 

Then, a few years ago, they changed the name to CMS, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

So CMS = Centers for Medicare and medcaid Services…. or does it mean Centers for medicare and Medicaid Services.

 

 Take your choice. But the question remains what happend to the other M?

 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services clearly is CMMS.  But to say this outloud, “See, eMM, eMM, eSS” makes one sound, at best, that they stutter, or perhaps are having a seizure. Besides, folks might get confused if they go to the CMMS website, an obscure website that is dedicated to “CMM experts…. serving CMM experts”TM (an actual trademarked name). A website that not only allows you to design your own PROBE, but has a PROBE of the month winner. This stuff is too good to even think for a minute I’m making up any of this.

These are the mysteries that keep me awake at night developing more material for speaking and blogging.

While there have been a number of suggested words for the “CMS” acronym that accurately reflect people’s feelings toward CMS, (”Can’t Manage Shi^^,” for example), but these words could perhaps be confused with the CMS of Content Management Systems… a software system that is, (creatively and  cleverly),  named for a system that helps manage… uhh… content!  Acronyms have become so common place… and confusing, there’s even an acronym finder website.

To avoid this type of confusion, I believe CMS is a new variant, a new evolution of governmental acronyms that reflect a more esoteric means of expression. It’s not based on what the letters themselves stand for, but rather how the letters are pronounced to express meaning.

“See, eMM, eSS,” on first glance, or pronunciation, is what CMS looks/sounds like. But how about “Sa, Mess?”

Which is the common colloquial version of the more formal “It is a mess.”

Which answers fully the question, why HCFA would change to CMS… it’s just the government’s way of stating the obvious in a far user friendly way, “It’s a mess!”

This comes as no surprise to anyone interfacing with CMS.

But why change the name? HCFA worked. Think of all the letterhead paper that changed. All the business cards that required overhaul. The myriad of phone book changes. Think of the expenses, (using our taxpayer money!)

What prompted this change? The desire to have a warmer, fuzzier HCFA, like the Peer Review Organizations, (PRO) changed its name to QIO’s, Quality Improvement Organizations? Evidently, in Massachusetts, they’re still not that warm and fuzzy.

I don’t know exactly, but can tell you something that occurred two months before HCFA changed its name to CMS.

I started a healthcare consulting business to help physicians improve CMS reimbursement by streamlining the E&M coding conundrum, to improve physician documentation that not only secured every cent of CMS reimbursement, but from all private third party payers as well, while maintaining a healthcare compliance track-record beyond reproach. I needed a catchy toll free number and tried a variety of toll free number combinations ’till I found one that wasn’t being used.

1-877-HCFA-SUX

No foolin’, it’s really my toll free number.

Irreverent? Easy to remember? A number that reflects physician and healhcare frustration with HCFA? Yes, Yes, YES!

Two months after I secured my 1-877-HCFA-SUX number. HCFA announced the change to CMS.

Coincidence?

I think not.