4 Reasons to Choose Your Improvement Activities Today

Statistically, you aren’t sure how you’re supposed to comply with quality reporting requirements this year. As late as June 2017, the majority of providers were still unfamiliar or only somewhat familiar with MACRA; only 9 percent described themselves as “very familiar”. But unless you’re a part of that 9 percent, we highly recommend that you take some time ASAP to familiarize yourself with the requirements and to make a plan for the rest of the year. And as part of that plan, here are four reasons why we recommend that you select Improvement Activities for your practice today (yes, literally today):

You are running out of time!

Under MIPS, you must report for a minimum of 90 consecutive days in order to be eligible to earn the maximum payment adjustment. Our readers who are good at mental math have just gone pale, because they realize that 90 days from the end of the year is coming up on October 2nd! That’s why it’s imperative that you prepare to start collecting data as soon as possible; if you attest to participating in Improvement Activities, you are expected to take a measurement at the beginning of the time period to compare to your results at the end, and to retain this information.

Improvement Activities is the easiest MIPS category to report.

Reporting this category is relatively simple. Eligible clinicians or groups must simply attest to completing between one and four out of 92 pre-selected improvement activities. To make things even easier, we have laid out a roadmap to reporting Improvement Activities, as well as further tips for selecting and scoring your Improvement Activities.

You have to participate in more than one category under MIPS.

You can’t get full points for just reporting the Quality Performance Category! CMS has recently clarified that participating in only one performance category for the 2017 reporting year will only qualify a provider or group to receive a maximum of 3 points. CMS justifies this decision because they expect that most providers and groups should be able to participate in both Quality and Improvement Activities. In order to receive a full category score in any performance category, a provider or group needs to participate in a minimum of two performance categories for at least 90 continuous days.You may reference the 2017 Final Rule for further details or contact QPP for further clarification on this point.

Some Improvement Activities count for bonus points!

The activities listed here are eligible for up to 10 bonus points in the Advancing Care Information Performance Category when reported through CEHRT. Additionally, four measures in the Behavioral and Mental Health subcategory of Improvement Activities overlap with measures from the Quality Performance Category. We can expect to see further overlaps in categories in the future as one of the objectives of MIPS is to have the Performance Categories have clearer links to each other. Participating in CAHPS for MIPS in the Quality Performance Category is also counted as a high-weight activity.

Still not sure where to start? Try our MIPS Learning Center, which has all the information you need to succeed under MIPS!