It’s none of my business, of course, but sometimes practices go through some rough patches and could use a little help — especially when it comes to complying with Medicare’s Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS).
If your practice has 15 or fewer eligible clinicians and is experiencing some type of “significant hardship” that has created “overwhelming barriers” to complying with MIPS’ Promoting Interoperability (PI) category, you are eligible to submit a hardship application.
If you are eligible for a hardship exemption, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will reweight the PI performance category to from 25 percent to zero percent when calculating your final score for the 2018 performance period. That 25 percent will then be reallocated to the quality performance category.
Because CMS doesn’t thoroughly define what qualifies as a “significant hardship” or an “overwhelming barrier,” the Texas Medical Association recommends saving all documentation of your circumstances and how they’ve affected your ability to participate in the PI category. If you can’t back up the reasons for your hardship, your score may be adjusted back to pre-exemption status.
The deadline to apply for a hardship exemption is Dec. 31, 2018.
For additional information on Promoting Interoperability, view the TMA PI Resource Center. If you have questions related to MIPS or PI, call the TMA HIT helpline at (800) 880-5720, or e-mail hit[at]texmed[dot]org.
Last Updated On
December 14, 2018
Originally Published On
October 24, 2018