Providers preparing for MIPS

The College of Healthcare Management Executives (CHIME) considers the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) a good opportunity for CMS to address several issues surrounding quality reporting guidelines, as well as some long-standing issues with meaningful use.

In a November 2015 letter to CMS, CHIME outlined several potential issues with MIPS and possible solutions.

“Two key pieces to advancing new payment models will be streamlining the MU [meaningful use] program and quality reporting requirements,” the letter stated.

“CHIME strongly supports creating a pathway for MU whereby physicians are moved to a more flexible regulatory model and away from a ‘pass or fail’ construct. Additionally, the complexities associated with quality reporting should be reduced to bring the value intended under the new models of care.”

CHIME said CMS should use the upcoming changes associated with the Medicare Access and CHIPS Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) and MIPS to streamline reporting guidelines for physicians. “Many CHIME members submit more than 20 reports across federal, state, and private sector programs for various clinical quality measures (CQM) each month. Hours of work and expertise are required to comply with these reporting demands and such burdens are exacerbated by a lack of technical harmonization. In other words, even when the same CQMs are used among different programs, they tend to require different technical specifications. The goal should be to eliminate duplicate quality measures and reporting requirements.”

This article was originally published in Physician Practice Perspectives. Subscribers can read the full article in the July 2016 issue.