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If you are one of the qualifying APM participants (QPs) who earned a lump sum incentive payment for your hard work for an advanced alternative payment model (APM) in 2017, congratulations!
 
The vast reshaping of E/M documentation standards and payment changes took a significant step closer to reality as CMS put a stamp of approval on its previous proposals to overhaul how medical practices report office and outpatient E/M services 2021.
 
Next year many providers will see a modest boost to the conversion factor that, along with relative value units (RVUs), dictates pay rates across all services in the Medicare physician fee schedule. The conversion factor will rise to $36.0896 in 2020, which CMS previously proposed, from $36.0391 in 2019, according to the final fee schedule. However, the anesthesia conversion factor will decrease to $22.2016 in 2020 from $22.2730 this year. That’s a drop from the proposed anesthesia conversion factor of $22.2774.
 
Recently Part B News gave you a heads-up on materials that you should store in case CMS audits your MIPS attestations. We got some added detail on the situation in a conversation with Lori Foley, managing principal with the PYA consultancy in Atlanta.
 
You can dismiss a lot of the controversial updates to office E/M services, such as blended payment rates, that drew an outcry from the medical community. But you’re now on the clock to get in line with far-reaching documentation changes for these oft-used services, according to the 2020 proposed Medicare physician fee schedule released today.
 

Quick question: Where is the documentation that supports your doctor's MIPS performance in 2017? If you don’t know the answer, start looking now and you'll spare yourself a last-minute scramble.

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