CMS Announces Hardship Relief for 2020 Merit-Based Incentive Program
CMS announced physicians will have the option to opt-out completely or partially from the 2020 Merit-Based Incentive Program (MIPS). In order to do this a hardship exemption must be completed and indicate the hardship is due to the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) Individuals and groups will have until December 31, 2020 to compete the application.
Physicians or groups filing hardship exemptions will have a few options for the 2020 performance year: 1) the practice can indicate they wish to not be scored on Cost and Quality, score only calculated based on re-weighting of Promoting Interoperability and Improvement Activities; or 2) opt-out of all four performance categories and be held harmless for the 2022 payment adjustment.
There will be an impact to physicians and/or groups opting out of MIPS. With a smaller pool of participants to pull monies from, the money allocated or available for payments to those that met or exceeded reporting will be reduced. The expected payouts projected originally by CMS will be much less than anticipated if physicians and groups opt out and do not have to pay into the program for not meeting the standard reporting levels.
The American Medical Association (AMA) in a post on their website indicated they will be monitoring the impact COVID-19 has on physicians and practices and continue to work with CMS “to ensure CMS liberally grants hardship requests due to the COVID-19 PHE”.
CMS put together a factsheet which outlines the changes in response to COVID-19 here.
