What Pathologists Need to Know for MIPS in 2018

The Merit Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) is in its second year and, as with last year, pathologists are exempt from MIPS category Promoting Interoperability (previously called Advancing Care Information and, before that, Meaningful Use), leaving three categories they will be scored on:

1.  Quality – Clinicians will report a full year’s work of data on at least 6 measures, one of which must be defined as an Outcome or High Priority measure

• TIP:  The quality measures for pathology are the same as last year

2.  Clinical Practice Improvement Activities – Clinicians choose from a list of 100 activities that describe their practice’s quality initiatives that have been in place for at least 90 consecutive days

• TIP:  Practices can report the same Practice Improvement Activities that they reported in Performance Year 2017, as long as their supporting documentation reflects their active engagement in those activities for 90 consecutive days in 2018

3.  Cost – new to the scoring calculations in 2018, this category is computed solely on adjudicated claims information so no additional data submission is required

• TIP:  as CMS is slowly incorporating this category into the program’s scoring, it only accounts for 10% of the overall score in 2018

For all the details on the MIPS categories as well as changes for the 2018 performance year – including the automatic 5 point bonus for Small Practices (those with 15 or fewer clinicians) – refer to our white paper, Fine-Tuning the Nuts and Bolts of 2018 MIPS for Pathology.