Women's Dermatologic Society

By Dr. Mark Kaufmann The bar has been raised. The amount of MIPS points required to be exempted from the 7% penalty in 2021 (for performance year 2019), is DOUBLE what it was last year. Instead of 15 MIPS points, you now need to get 30 MIPS points. With a little more effort, there is still a way to avoid the MIPS penalty in 2019, and while it’s still possible to do this without using a registry OR an EHR, both of them would make it a lot easier. Here’s how to get it done: If you are a small (fewer than 15 clinicians) practice, each clinician needs to complete five measures on at least one patient. I still recommend that each clinician complete five measures on more than one patient. Any combination of measures will do, and five will give you 15.75 points. In order to get up to 30 MIPS points, you will also need to do a High Weighted Improvement Activity (IA). You can choose any of the high weighted IAs from the 2019 Improvement Activities List , and if you want to do it wit...

Similar to last year, I have come up with a way to avoid the MIPS penalty in 2018 without having to use a registry  OR even  have an EHR. It’s not as easy as last year, but still reasonable (if you can call anything having to do with a government program reasonable)… So here it goes: Here is what I have come up with for avoiding the MIPS penalty in 2020- with assumption being that you are on paper, DON’T have DataDerm (or another registry), and are in a group of fewer than 15 clinicians. You need to get 15 MIPS points to avoid the penalty.  (Last year it was 3 points.) Any practice with fewer than 15 practitioners- automatically gets a Small Practice Bonus=  5 points So, you really only need to get 10 more points to avoid the penalty. Only way to get points- given above assumptions- is to submit quality measures via claims. So, you will need  4 quality measures (one time, on one patient)  to get  12 more points  and avoid th...

Hate MIPS? Here’s a way to avoid the 4% penalty in 2019 by submitting claims to Medicare: http://www.womensderm.org/UserFiles/file/AvoidMIPSPenalty2019.pdf Submit these claims on the Quality Measures website here: https://qpp.cms.gov/mips/quality-measures This Pearl is provided by the Practice Advisory Committee. Stay up to date on their monthly pearls by following #PACPearls on twitter.