CMS To Reweight MIPS Cost Component for 2020

Last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that it will not be calculating or applying the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) Cost Performance Category score to 2020 MIPS participants or their groups. The decision comes after several months of CMS expressing caution on whether the cost performance category scores could be accurately calculated during the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. 

Ultimately, CMS indicated that the “volume of data available to calculate the scores for the cost measures [had] significantly decreased overall” resulting in a decision that CMS could not “reliably calculate scores that would adequately capture and reflect the performance of MIPS eligible clinicians.” 

MIPS Eligible Clinicians and their groups do NOT need to take any action on this announcement.

Anesthesiologists may see little change in how their scores will be calculated since most anesthesiologists and their groups are not scored in the Cost performance category. For those anesthesiologists and groups who were likely to be scored in the cost category for 2020, the CMS decision will result in the MIPS Cost performance category (comprising just 15% of the total MIPS score) being reweighted, in most cases, to the MIPS Quality Performance Category.

Preliminary feedback reports on 2020 data submission is currently available on the Quality Payment Program website. 

For more information on MIPS participation in 2020 and 2021, please visit the ASA Quality Payment Program website.