More physician practices are earning positive payments under Medicare’s Merit-Based Incentive Payment System, but smaller practices won’t fare quite as well as larger ones in 2020.
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Under the Quality Payment Program, 97% of MIPS-eligible clinicians are scheduled to receive an incentive payment this year, based on meeting performance criteria in 2018. That’s up five percentage points from the 2017 performance year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reported Jan. 6. But 2% of clinicians will see a negative adjustment for not having met those criteria.
Among small practices, however, the rate of MIPS-eligible clinicians earning a positive payment adjustment in 2020 is about 84%. While lower than the overall rate, that’s still a 10 percentage point improvement from the previous performance year. But 13% of MIPS-eligible clinicians in small practices face a negative adjustment.
The bonus rate among rural practices mirrors the national rate, with more than 97% of rural practices eligible to receive a bonus in 2020. In 2019, 93% of MIPS-eligible clinicians in rural settings received a positive adjustment.
More small and rural practices will see positive payment adjustments in 2020, compared with 2019, CMS Administrator Seema Verma said. “This shows we are making strides toward making MIPS a practical program for every clinician, regardless of size.”
While most clinicians earned a positive adjustment, Ms. Verma acknowledged that the dollar value of the adjustment remains relatively small.
For clinicians who met the exceptional performance criteria for 2020 based on work in 2018, the maximum adjustment will be 1.68%. For those who failed to meet the exceptional performance threshold, the maximum positive adjustment will be 0.2%. The range of negative payment adjustments will be between –0.01% and –5%.
Those positive payment adjustments are modest in part because adjustments overall must be budget neutral, Ms. Verma explained. But CMS expects that to change in future years. As the program matures, increased performance thresholds will shrink distribution of positive payment adjustments for high-performing clinicians. That will lead to larger positive payment adjustments for those who do earn them.