Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

Plus: If approved, CMS will reweight the PI category.

If you’re struggling with meeting the demands of the Quality Payment Program (QPP) Promoting Interoperability (PI) performance category, you may be eligible for a hardship exception.

Details: For the QPP Performance Year (PY) 2019, Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS)-eligible providers may apply for a PI hardship exception due to extreme and uncontrollable circumstances. Applications must cite one of the following five reasons for review and approval, QPP advises: small practice; de-certified EHR; connectivity issues; extreme and uncontrollable circumstances; and lack control over the availability of certified EHR technology (CEHRT).

If your hardship exception is approved, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will “reweight your PI performance category score to 0 percent of the final score,” and/or “reallocate the 25 percent weighting of the PI performance category to the Quality performance category,” the agency says.

Reminder: “Please note that simply not using CEHRT does not qualify you for reweighting of your PI performance category,” reminds CMS.

Deadline: The QPP hardship exception application is open through December 31, 2019.

Apply at https://qpp.cms.gov/mips/exception-applications.