Surviving MIPS: Small Practices

MIPS has proven to be an extremely difficult and cost-burdening program for many practices across the nation, especially small practices.  CMS has heard all of the suggestions submitted to make this program more small practice friendly by adding hardships, special statuses, reweighting of the categories and virtual groups.

1. Hardship Exceptions: If a practice has insufficient internet connectivity, experiences extreme or uncontrollable circumstances or has lack of control over the availability of CEHRT they may quality for a CMS hardship exemption for the MIPS program. QPP has a list of hardship exceptions.
2. Special Status: Clinicians in this category will automatically be reweighted and do not need to submit a QPP Hardship Application. These clinicians include the following:
   1. Hospital-based MIPS-eligible clinicians
   2. Physician assistants
   3. Nurse practitioners
   4. Clinical nurse specialists
   5. Certified registered nurse anesthetists
   6. Non-patient facing clinicians
   7. Ambulatory Surgical Center based MIPS-eligible clinicians
3. Re-weighting of Categories: The ACI (PI) category could be re-weighted down to 0 and it would be added to the Quality category.
4. Virtual Groups: These are for TINs assigned to one or more solo practitioners, or to one or more groups consisting of 10 or fewer clinicians, or both, that elect to form a virtual group for the performance period for a year. Find out more about these here.