The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced flexibilities for clinicians participating in Year 2 of the Quality Payment Program (QPP), established by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). In addition to carrying over many of the flexibilities from the transition year, CMS has provided a few new flexibilities to help clinicians get ready for Year 3.

The following flexibilities give clinicians more opportunity to participate successfully. For clinicians participating in the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), CMS provided some old and some new flexibilities including:

• Raising the performance threshold from 3 points to 15 points
• Allowing the use of 2014 Edition and/or 2015 Certified Electronic Health Record Technology (CEHRT) in Year 2. However, CMS will give a bonus to clinicians using only 2015 CEHRT.
• Giving up to 5 bonus points on the final score for treatment of complex patients.
• Automatically weighting the Quality, Advancing Care Information, and Improvement Activities performance categories at zero percent of the final score for clinicians impacted by hurricanes Irma, Harvey and Maria and other natural disasters.

CMS also set out to make it easier for small practices to participate in the QPP by continuing to offer tailored flexibilities for groups of 15 or fewer clinicians, including:

• Excluding individual MIPS eligible clinicians or groups with less than or equal to $90,000 in Part B allowed charges or less than or equal to 200 Part B beneficiaries.
• Adding 5 bonus points to the final scores of small practices.
• Giving solo practitioners and small practices the choice to form or join a Virtual Group to participate with other practices.
• Continuing to award small practices 3 points for measures in the Quality performance category that don’t meet data completeness requirements.
• Adding a new hardship exception for the Advancing Care Information performance category for small practices.

We realize it can be hard for small practices to participate in the QPP, but we are here to help! Learn more about how Practice EHR is equipped to help you tackle MACRA. Schedule a demo with our team today!