MIPS Tips: Report the basics to avoid dwindling payments

In this blog from Epstein Becker & Green and its affiliate EBG Advisors, Robert Atlas and Yulian Shtern delve into the upcoming Merit-Based Incentive Payment System and how physicians can best maneuver their way through the process . Physicians participating in Medicare should understand how they can avoid the payment reductions levied for failing to participate with value-based payment programs. A recent report from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) indicates that nearly 500,000 clinicians will see a 2% reduction in their 2017 Medicare reimbursements for failing to participate in the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS). Medicare’s new Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), which replaces PQRS in 2017, promises to escalate such fee reductions, as physicians who fail to participate in 2017 will see a payment adjustment of up to 4% in 2019. However, physicians can avoid the payment reduction under MIPS with less strenuous reporting requirements compared with PQRS.