Health Information Compliance Alert

Published on Fri Dec 11, 2020 PDF

But, you may want to apply soon as the deadline is fast approaching.

If your Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) measures have been negatively impacted during the 2020 performance year (PY), you can still submit a hardship application. And this year, the feds have added an IT-specific hardship exception for struggling providers.

Details: Due to COVID-19, many MIPS eligible clinicians (ECs) may not be able to meet their Quality Payment Program (QPP) requirements. The QPP offers providers two exception options for PY 2020. They include the following:

1. If COVID-19 has caused a MIPS EC to deal with “extreme and uncontrollable circumstances,” they can request a reweighting of their performance categories with the Extreme and Uncontrollable Circumstances Exception application.
2. Another offering for PY 2020 is the MIPS Promoting Interoperability (PI) Performance Category Hardship Exception application. This option lets MIPS ECs request reweighting of their PI categories due to specific reasons that include: small practice; lack of certified EHR technology; connectivity problems; or financial or vendor issues.

For both applications, you’ll need your HCQIS Access Roles and Profile (HARP) account to log into the QPP portal and subsequent application. The deadline to apply is Dec. 31, 2020.

Find out more about your QPP hardship application options at https://qpp.cms.gov/mips/exception-applications#extremeCircu mstancesException-2020.