Get ready to refocus your quality reporting. The merit-based incentive payment system (MIPS), a new, combined reporting program from CMS, will launch next year, confirmed CMS acting administrator Andy Slavitt during a March 7 webinar convened by the Association of Health Care Journalists.
"That will kick off in 2017," said Slavitt during the press-only webinar. The MIPS program, borne in the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, will roll three current quality-reporting programs into one. Those programs include the physician quality reporting system (PQRS), the EHR incentive meaningful use program and the value-based modifier program.
Providers will have to wait to discover the precise scope of MIPS and what they'll need to do to prepare for the new reporting era. "We are several months away from the final rule," noted Slavitt.
Yet Slavitt confirmed that MIPS will measure four areas that should appear familiar, based on the current reporting programs that thousands of physicians are engaged in -- quality; resource use; use of health information technology; and practice improvement.
Already CMS has convened multiple focus groups to help steer the direction of the MIPS program. CMS is actively trying to create "user-driven policy design" that will be less burdensome on providers, Slavitt conceded. While the emphasis on value-based care will only get more pronounced, CMS is "trying to be as minimally invasive as possible" on the daily functioning of the provider community, noted Slavitt.
"Nobody likes to be measured," he added, noting that the expected final rule will seek to work with physicians in a way that supports, rather than detracts, from patient care.
Editor's note: Learn more about the value-based modifier during the April 6 webinar Master the Value-Based Modifier: Report successfully to gain -- not lose -- a 4% Medicare boost. Register at http://www.decisionhealth.com/conferences/a2660.