When the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (“MACRA”) goes into effect, most participating physicians will fall under the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (“MIPS”). MIPS was originally scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2019, but its first “performance period” was to begin on January 1, 2017, as assessments in 2019 were to be based upon a two-year “look back” period; thus, payment adjustments in 2019 were to be based upon the performance factors as applied beginning in 2017. However, on July 13, Andy Slavitt, the Acting Administrator of the CMS, testified before the Senate Finance Committee that implementation may have to be delayed, due to fears of an adverse impact upon small and rural practices, so it now appears these timelines will be modified. There are three exceptions from participation in MIPS: 1) a physician who is participating in Medicare for the first time is exempt from MIPS for the first year of participation; 2) a physician who sees a small number of Medicare patients and falls below the volume threshold established for participation; and 3) a physician who participates in an eligible Alternative Payment Model (“APM”) and qualifies for incentive payments through that program (the APM exception will be discussed in a later article in this series).
MIPS combines parts of the Physician Quality Reporting System (“PQRS”), the Value Modifier (“VM” or Value-based Payment Modifier), and the Medicare Electronic Health Record (“EHR”) incentive program into a single program. Provider performance will be analyzed under four factors: 1) 50% of the score is based upon “Quality” (replacing the Physician Quality Reporting System (“PQRS”) and Value-based Payment Modifier (“VM”)); 2) 25% on “Advancing Care Information” (replacing EHR Meaningful Use); 3) 15% on “Clinical Practice Improvement” (“CPIA”); and 4) 10% on “Resource Utilization.” The percentages for Advancing Care Information and Clinical Practice Improvement are to stay the same for 2019, 2020 and 2021, while Quality goes down to 45% in 2020 and 30% in 2021, while Resource Utilization goes to 15% and 30%, respectively, for those years. Based upon a composite performance score in each of these four categories, physicians will receive either a positive, or a negative, adjustment in compensation.
According to the proposed regulations, these four factors will be assessed as follows, with different reporting mechanisms depending upon whether the eligible clinician is an individual or a member of a group practice:
- 1Quality: For most MIPS eligible clinicians, CMS proposes to include a minimum of six measures with at least one cross-cutting measure (for patient-facing MIPS eligible clinicians) and an outcome measure if available; if an outcome measure is not available, then the eligible clinician would report one other high priority measure (appropriate use, patient safety, efficiency, patient experience, and care coordination measures) in lieu of an outcome measure. MIPS eligible clinicians can meet this criterion by selecting measures either individually or from a specialty-specific measure set. For individual practitioners, the reporting mechanisms are to be claims, Qualified Clinical Data Registries (“QCDRs”), qualified registry, Electronic Health Records (“EHR”) and administrative claims (which need not be submitted). For group practices, it will be QCDRs, qualified registry, EHR, CMS Web Interface (for groups of 25 or more), CMS-approved survey vendor for Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (“CAHPS;” reported in conjunction with another data submission mechanism) and administrative claims (which need not be submitted).
- Resource Use: Continuation of two measures from the VM: total per capita costs for all attributed ben