A new year brings new regulatory changes for our medical practices and we want to make sure that our clients are prepared to get the highest possible increase in their Medicare payments. Here are some important dates and requirements that you will need to deal with in 2018.

2017 Quality Payment Program Data Reporting

For the Merit Based Incentive Program (MIPS) you will need to report for three categories in 2017: Quality, Advancing Care Information and Improvement Activities before the end of March 2018. Since there is a possibility of a payment increase we recommend reporting on as many measures as possible to get the highest possible increase. At the very least you should report one of the following to avoid a negative payment adjustment in 2019:

• 1 Quality Measure
• 1 Improvement Activity
• 4-5 Advancing Care Information Core Measures

Quality Data Reporting

Most of our clients will have already reported their quality data via routine claims submission during 2017. Please look for the email we sent out on September 29, 2017 with the subject “URGENT: Avoid the -4% Payment Adjustment in 2019” for details on this form of submission.

If you did not do this then you are most likely signed up with a Qualified Clinical Data Registry (QCDR) like FigMD and the registry will be handling the data submission for you for last year. You should confirm with your QCDR that all your data has been collected and submitted to CMS.

Advancing Care Information Reporting

Advancing Care Information data is going to be submitted through attestation via the CMS Quality Payment Program website. You will want to run your final reports for the full year or calendar quarter for which you will be reporting.

Improvement Activity Reporting

Improvement Activities will also be reported through attestation or by your QCDR. CMS recommends that you have documentation to validate your selected activities.

Getting your Certification ID for Medisoft Clinical

In order to attest you will need to get your CMS ID for the Certified Health IT product used to meet the Advancing Care Information measures. This can be found by going to the CHPL website and completing the following four steps:

Step 1: Once on the search screen, enter “Medisoft” into the search box and you should find there are three or four products listed.

Step 2: Click on the yellow Cert ID button next to version 11.1 as well as the version of Medisoft used to meet the requirement v19 SP1, v20 or v21.

Step 3: With both selected you will see a drop down appear showing 100% of base criteria met.

Step 4: Click the “Get 2014 EHR Certification ID” button to get your certification ID.

Document Retention

The CMS document retention policy requires that you retain documentation for 6 years. It is because of this we strongly recommend saving this report along with a copy of your completed 2017 HIPAA Security Risk Assessment to a folder on your network. If your documentation for Improvement Activities is done outside of the EHR then it should be saved along with your Advancing Care Information reports for 2017. Finally, verify with the technician managing your nightly backups that this folder is being backed up along with your patient data.

2018 Quality Payment Program

The reporting period for MIPS 2018 started on January 1, 2018 and will continue until December 31, 2018. You should be able to continue reporting the same measures as last year throughout 2018.

We recommend checking the main Quality Payment Program website regularly for the most updated and accurate regulatory information.

 

The content of this post was drafted after reviewing the following sources. For a more complete understanding of the topics covered, please click on the links listed below:

Quality Payment Program

Quality Payment Program Resource Library

Final Rule for 2018 Quality Payment Program