Chair, Legislative and Public Policy Council
If you’re an eligible clinician participating in the “Quality Payment Program,” you now have until Tuesday, April 3, 2018 at 8 PM (EDT) to submit your 2017 MIPS performance data. You can submit your 2017 performance data using the new feature on the “Quality Payment Program” website.
As ACG has previously reported, ACG members can click here to begin the process. Here are some last minute practical tips for GI practices and ACG members:
Your first step: Find out your status (you may not need to report data)
Determine whether or not you have to worry about MACRA/MIPS. Click here and enter your 10-digit National Provider Identifier (NPI) number. This will tell you whether you meet the thresholds in order to be required to participate in MACRA. Who has to participate in MACRA for the 2017 reporting year?
- If you are a: physician, physician assistant, nurse practitioner, clinical nurse specialist, or CRNA; and
- If you bill more than $30,000 to Medicare, and provide care to more than 100 Medicare patients per year.
Your second step: If you meet the eligibility requirements and want to submit your data
You need your Enterprise Identity Management (EIDM) account to log in. This is the account that you or your practice managers used to access your practice’s quality and resource use report (QRUR), or if your practice previously participated in the physician quality reporting system (PQRS).
Forgot your credentials? Go to the CMS Enterprise Portal to reset your user ID or password.
Don’t have a user account yet? Visit the CMS Enterprise Portal to create one, or call 1-866-288-8292.
From there, the website will send a verification code to your cell phone or email on file.
Your third step: You can report the minimum amount of data to avoid a reimbursement cut
Once you are in the system, you will see your personalized MIPS “Dashboard,” where you should find each tax identification number (TIN) associated with your National Provider Identifier (NPI) number.
You will need to select that you are reporting as an “individual.”
You will be able to select which MIPS performance category you plan on submitting data for at this time: Quality, Advancing Care Information (aka the new Meaningful Use), or Improvement Activities.
- You have the option of uploading a file of your reporting data (if you are downloading measures from an EHR, for example)
- For each performance category, you will select the time period for which you will be reporting data (For example: 90 continuous days)
- You will first have to answer required attestation (“yes” or “no” answers) questions, before the system will allow you to answer any other questions.
Please note: You may be too late to report measures for the MIPS Quality performance category if you have not yet done so via a calendar year 2017 Medicare claims form, or via a registry, such as GIQuIC. DO NOT WORRY: You can still attest to one measure in the MIPS Improvement Activities performance category, or the base score for the Advancing Care Information performance category via this website.
Some Important Things to Note
You will find that there is no “send” or “submit” button when inputting your data. Once you enter the data, the website will automatically calculate these data and scores. You can re-enter data at any point prior to the applicable April deadline.
By attesting to these questions, numerators/denominators, etc. CMS assumes that you are answering these questions truthfully. CMS also reserves the right to audit your data at a later point. Thus, documentation and record retention is important.
CMS has also developed instructional videos to walk you through the process of logging into the system and entering data.
Whitfield L. Knapple, MD, FACG
Chair, ACG Legislative and Public Policy Council