If you are anything like me, once Christmas is over I begin looking forward to the first day of spring. The flowers, sunshine, and nice weather are very welcome.  However, there is one annual Spring event that a large majority of healthcare providers probably wish would just pass right by them. I am not talking about taxes, those affect everyone!  I am talking about the annual Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) reporting.

As a provider who is eligible to report for MIPS (EP), you have until March 31, 2020 to submit all MIPS data collected on 2019 services. If you have collected and reported this data as outlined by CMS, you should successfully avoid a -7% adjustment on your 2021 Medicare eligible payments. In fact, you could even receive a small percentage increase on your payments in 2021 if you receive an excellent final score on your reporting.

Of course, most providers that we work with are far more concerned about negative adjustment avoidance than the chance that they could receive a far less substantial positive adjustment, likely because the negative adjustment percentage is fixed and guaranteed; the positive adjustment percentage is variable and uncertain.

In 2018, we helped our MIPS eligible providers avoid a total of $130,000 in negative adjustments on their 2020 Medicare payments. In fact, those who used us for reporting averaged a +1.82% incentive.  For 2019, we are on track to do the same.

If reporting for 2019 data by March 2020 is not enough to occupy your valuable time, it is also time to start thinking about capturing MIPS data to report for 2020.  The adjustment for not reporting increases to an impactful -9% on 2022 Medicare payments.

How can you do all of this while making patient care your priority?  You can call RBS.  Our team has created some very useful documents and flowcharts that can help you get started on the road to successful 2020 data collection and reporting.

The MIPS 2020 program requirements are not much different from MIPS 2019.  Below, I have provided the four components of the MIPS 2020 program:

• Quality-each EP must report six quality measures on at least 70% of all patients seen in 2020.
• Promoting Interoperability-each EP must submit collected data for certain measures from each of the four objectives measured (unless an exclusion is claimed) for the same 90 continuous days (or more) during 2020.
• Improvement Activities-each EP must report the number of minimum required activities for a continuous 90-day period.
• Cost-EP do not need to report anything. Medicare determines cost measure performance based on claims data.

If you aren’t sure how to even get started, give the RBS team a call.  We can help you determine eligibility, create a workflow to capture data, identify if you qualify for any exemptions, and direct you to the best MIPS reporting platform.

Contact us today, we would love to help you keep your hard-earned dollars and allow you to keep the focus where it needs to be, on your patients.