Online Publication Date:
17 Sep 2018
New Details in CMS Update to 2017 MIPS Performance Feedback

Recently, we informed you that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a status tool on the Quality Payment Program (QPP) website for performance feedback for clinicians included in the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) during the 2017 performance year. This status tool allows clinicians to check to see if their payment adjustment for 2019 (based on the 2017 data) will be positive, neutral, or negative. In conjunction with the status tool, there was an open period to request a targeted review of your data until October 1, 2018.
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David White
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Recently, we informed you that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a status tool on the Quality Payment Program (QPP) website for performance feedback for clinicians included in the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) during the 2017 performance year. This status tool allows clinicians to check to see if their payment adjustment for 2019 (based on the 2017 data) will be positive, neutral, or negative. In conjunction with the status tool, there was an open period to request a targeted review of your data until October 1, 2018.

However, that deadline has now been extended until October 15, 2018 due to a CMS discovery of several “prevailing concerns” in the data during the process of conducting targeted reviews. This means that if you have not checked your 2017 data – you should do so now.  If you have already checked your status, you should recheck it.

The problem areas in the previous calculations identified by CMS are:

  • Applying the 2017 Advancing Care Information (ACI) and Extreme and Uncontrollable Circumstances hardship exceptions
  • Awarding of Improvement Activity credit for successful participation in the Improvement Activities (IA) Burden Reduction Study
  • Adding the All-Cause Readmission (ACR) measure to the MIPS final score. 


CMS writes:

“Addressing and correcting for the above elements resulted in changes to the 2017 MIPS final score and associated 2019 MIPS payment adjustment for the clinicians who were impacted by the identified issues. Additionally, in order to ensure that we maintain the budget neutrality that is required by law under the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), some clinicians will see slight changes in their payment adjustment as a result of the reapplication of budget neutrality.  These revisions were made to the performance feedback on the Quality Payment Program website on September 13, 2018. We encourage you to sign-in to the Quality Payment Program website as soon as possible to review your performance feedback. If you believe an error still exists with your 2019 MIPS payment adjustment calculation, the targeted review process is available for you.”

ASN urges you to check your status and request a targeted review if you think your data has errors. CMS lists several resources to assist you in addition to the QPP website.

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