Avoiding MIPS Penalty: There’s an App for That!

This is a guest post by Pawan Jindal of MyMIPSScore and originally appeared at the MyMIPSScore Blog

In our last blog we discussed an overview of MIPS submission process. As promised, we are very excited today to announce the availability of a new feature of MyMipsScore that will allow you to avoid the MIPS penalty for free.

 

Before reading further, please make sure you understand implications of the different options of Pick Your Pace. If your practice has made a calculated decision to pick the “Test Pace” to avoid the penalty, you have the option to submit the data for any one of the three performance categories of your choosing – ACI, Quality, or IA.

The goal of this three-part blog series is to help you understand the data collection and submission requirements for each of the performance categories from the “penalty avoidance” point of view. In this first part, we will review the ACI category.

Part 1: ACI Category

Part 2: Improvement Activities Category Quality Category

Part 3: Quality Category

 

Why choose Advancing Care Information (ACI)?

There are two reasons why you might want to choose ACI as the category to avoid penalty

1. As most MIPS eligible providers participated in the Meaningful Use, it makes it easy to understand and complete the minimum requirements for this category.
2. Even the minimum data required for ACI (90 continuous days) will earn you a MIPS score of at least12.5 points, much greater than the required 3 points for avoiding the penalty. It doesn’t hurt to have those additional points.

 

There are 5 main steps to complete the minimum requirements for ACI

1. Complete your Security Risk Assessment as you had done it in prior years for Meaningful Use.
2. If you don’t know already, confirm the EHR edition you are using – 2014  edition or 2015 edition.
3. If you are a group, decide if you will be reporting as an individual or as a group
4. Run a Meaningful Use Report from your EHR for any 90 continuous days. Make sure you print a copy of the dashboard and keep it for your audit records.
5. Complete the Prevention of Information Blocking Attestation.

To meet the minimum requirements, you will only need the data (numerators and denominators) for the following four (3 if you are using a 2014 Edition EHR) measures. If you are submitting data for the group, you need to enter the aggregated data for the entire group for each measure. You may be eligible for an exclusion for all these measures except “Provide Patient Access. The app will guide you to help you determine if any exclusions apply to you.

1. e-Prescribing
2. Send a Summary of Care
3. Request/Accept Summary of Care (Only for 2015 Edition)
4. Provide Patient Access

Once you have collected all the data above, download the MyMipsScore app on your favorite mobile platform and follow the step by step instructions to enter the data as shown in the video.

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After you have entered all the data, you will receive a file in your email that you can submit to CMS once the submission portal become available after January 1, 2018. We will be posting more details as soon as they become available on the exact steps to upload the file.

That is all you need to do to avoid a penalty and earn some additional points in 2017.

In our next two blogs, we will cover the Quality and Improvement Activities  performance categories from the penalty avoidance perspective.

If you are still interested in maximizing your MIPS score and earn the maximum possible incentives for your organization or your clients, we can help.

If you are an EHR vendor and interested in integrating with MyMipsScore, get in touch with us.