Oh, MIPS.. we meet again. I have kind of a love/hate relationship with this program. At some points it’s awesome because it combines all of the incentive programs administrators and providers had to keep track of for the past 6 years. On the other side, I hate it because it takes so much time to learn a new program.
MIPS is kind of like when you read a book then someone makes that book into a movie. While you’re watching the movie, all you can think about is if it’s following the same track that the book did. Well we all know they are almost never the same. So MIPS is like the movie version of the incentive program books – kind of similar but very different at the same time. So try to forget about the structure of the old programs and keep an open mind with MIPS.
The measures in the program are basically the same measures we’ve seen in the past for PQRS and Meaningful Use. They have added a few new ones, but nothing too terrifying.
The hard part is MIPS scoring. CMS has completely revamped it and it’s going to take a little getting used to. In the past we have had benchmarks that each provider had to meet across the board.
Now, we have deciles for each individual measure, weird. So what does that mean? It means that you will be given partial credit for measures, even if the provider didn’t meet the highest decile. The goal is to meet the total points for each category. You can find that breakdown from CMS here.
So this time around it’s going to be a lot of math. CMS has provided a break down for the deciles of the quality category and ACI category measures here. Scroll to the bottom of the page and download the “2017 Quality Benchmarks” zip file and the “Advancing Care information Measure Specifications” zip file.
This is a big change but I promise you are more prepared than you think. And I’m always here for you guys! Just contact us today & we can chat.
Happy Reporting!
