Practice Management Alert

Question: My practice is making the transition to Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), but I don’t know whether we should be sending quality data to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) this year. Is there a way to find out?

Kansas Subscriber

Answer: CMS now offers a MIPS Participation Lookup Tool. In 2017, the inaugural year of the Quality Payment Program (QPP), the reporting measure requirements for MIPS eligible clinicians were pretty onerous. Then, eligible clinicians had to bill more than $30,000 in allowable charges under Medicare Part B and provide services to at least 100 Medicare Part B beneficiaries. But for 2018, CMS has changed the requirements: The low-volume threshold changes mean that eligible clinicians must bill over $90,000 or provide services to 200 Medicare Part B beneficiaries in a year.

Luckily, the new MIPS Participation Lookup Tool should illuminate whether you need to submit your quality data. Check your status here by going to this URL and entering your National Provider Identifier (NPI): https://qpp.cms.gov/participation-lookup/.