The Advancing Care Information (ACI) Performance Category is Meaningful Use updated to be more flexible, customizable, flexible and focused on patient engagement and interoperability. ACI is worth 25% of your MIPS Composite Performance Score.
The first step to MIPS reporting is determining if you need to report, and if you will be reporting on a group (TIN) or individual (NPI) level. Physicians, Physician Assistants, Nurse Practitioners, Clinical Nurse Specialists, Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists are all considered eligible clinicians in 2017. MIPS reporting will be required for eligible clinicians who are not participating in an Advanced Alternative Payment Model, see at least 100 Medicare Part B beneficiaries, and at have at least $30,000 in Medicare Part B allowed charges.
There are additional eligibility requirements for Advancing Care Information participation. Physicians Assistants, Nurse Practitioners, Clinical Nurse Specialists, Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists, hospital-based clinicians, non-patient facing clinicians, and clinicians who qualify for a hardship exemption are all exempt from the Advancing Care Information Performance Category. Clinicians that are otherwise participating in MIPS that are exempt from ACI will have ACI re-weighted to 0%, and the Quality Performance Category re-weighted to 85%.
Whether you report as a group or as an individual, you must do so for every performance category of MIPS. Groups will be determined on the TIN level, and may contain all clinicians that would otherwise be considered ineligible.
The ACI measures that you are eligible to report is depends on the ONC certification of your EHR. EHRs certified to the 2015 edition can use any measures that they would like to, whereas EHRs certified to the 2014 edition must use the transition year ACI measures. You can determine the certification year of your EHR by searching the Certified Health IT Product List.
Attesting to at least the required measures is required to receive any credit for the ACI. Successfully reporting these measures will automatically award you 50% of the total possible ACI Performance Category Score.
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2015 Edition CEHRT Measures |
2014 Edition CEHRT Measures |
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e-Prescribing |
e-Prescribing |
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Security Risk Analysis |
Security Risk Analysis |
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Provide Patient Access |
Provide Patient Access |
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Send a Summary of Care Record |
Health Information Exchange |
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Request / Accept a Summary of Care |
In addition to the required measures, you can report other ACI measures to receive full credit for the ACI performance category. In order to receive credit towards your performance score, you must report numerator and denominator information for measures, rather than simply attesting.
Predicting your performance score is straightforward. Your performance rate, or the number of times you complete the specified quality action for a measure compared to the total number of times you reported the measure, will directly relate to the performance score you receive. You can receive a maximum of 90 points in the performance score category. The total category score will be capped at 100%, so you only need 50% as a performance score to have a perfect score for the Advancing Care Information Performance Category.
For further understanding of how ACI scoring works, please read our article dedicated to breaking down the ACI scoring process.