“In 2015, Congress passed the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act – or MACRA. In an attempt to streamline multiple quality programs for physicians, the law created the Merit Based Incentive Payments System (MIPS). Unfortunately, upon implementation of the law, many clinician stakeholders still found the system confusing and burdensome.”
“Shortly after President Trump took office, we began taking a close look at ways to cut government red tape. At CMS, this effort is called Patients Over Paperwork (PoP). Through PoP, we’ve sought clinician input through requests for information, listening sessions, and interviews, and we’ve asked them to tell us ways we can get rid of the needless, duplicative paperwork that keeps them from caring for their patients. We’ve received incredible feedback.”
“Through PoP and a related initiative called Meaningful Measures, we’ve focused on improving quality measurement for doctors. This year, we were excited to finalize our MIPS Value Pathways (MVPs) proposal in our 2020 Physician Fee Schedule final rule that would transform the MIPS program into one that engages clinicians and specialty societies, to craft measures that assess them on what matters most – outcomes.”
“While our MVP framework becomes effective in 2021, we’re still committed to implementing the current version of MIPS. To that end, earlier this year, we released preliminary participation data for clinicians eligible to participate in MIPS. We are pleased to announce that our participation rates for 2018 exceeded our participation rates in 2017, the first year of the program. We now have additional performance results for the MIPS 2018 performance year and we are excited to share them with you…” Read the full article here.
Source: 2018 Quality Payment Program (QPP) Performance Results – By Seema Verma, January 6, 2020. CMS.
