Altarum today announces MIPScast™, a user-friendly, interactive web-based tool designed to help clinicians predict and improve their Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) scores in order to comply with the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA).

MIPScast helps clinicians proactively manage their future Medicare payments by providing a simple way to compare benchmarks and estimate their final score while allowing them to evaluate different scenarios and maximize their score before submitting it to CMS. Through an online web application, MIPScast allows clinicians to select, enter or upload data for their preferred measures and activities across all performance categories (Quality, Advancing Care Information, and Improvement Activities for 2017). Different reporting methods, measures and bonus points can be evaluated to determine the best choices that may yield the highest scores.

Altarum’s long-standing work on value-based reimbursement programs with CMS ensures that MIPScast users always receive the most exacting results and up-to-date program rules. In addition, MIPScast:

  • Is user-friendly, with limited application training;
  • Is clinician-focused, facilitating scoring for applicable specialty sets, small/rural practices, APM participants, and patient-centered medical homes;
  • Provides easy upload of QRDA category III files from a provider’s CEHRT, and ensures they are up-to-date with program changes and challenges that always come with new federal regulations;
  • Allows users to complete the process within minutes, depending on the condition of their data;
  • Has already helped more than 3,000 clinicians understand their practice data, giving quick results and accurate scores;
  • Is scalable to either large or small groups.

Who Must Comply with MIPS and by When?

For the 2017 participation year, all physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, and certified registered nurse anesthetists who have more than $30,000 in Medicare Part B allowable charges and have more than 100 Part B-enrolled Medicare beneficiaries during either of the 2017 performance period determinations are subject to MIPS payment adjustments. Clinicians have until March 31, 2018, to submit their 2017 performance data to CMS.

“MIPScast helps clinicians achieve the best possible score thanks to its easy and user-friendly data importing methods and step-by-step guidelines,” says Anya Day, director of Altarum's Center for Appropriate Care. “This one-stop tool is a must for any clinician planning to submit 2017 performance data to CMS by the deadline."

About MACRA and MIPS

MACRA was enacted into law in 2015, and required the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to implement the Quality Payment Program, which aims to transition the health care industry from fee-for-service to value-based care. The Merit-based Incentive Payment System, one of two payment tracks of the Quality Payment Program, combines legacy quality reporting programs, plus an improvement category into a single new composite scoring and reporting system.

Under MIPS, clinicians can receive positive, neutral or negative adjustments to their Medicare payments based on their final score. Specifically, a 2017 final MIPS score could adjust clinicians' Medicare payments for items and services furnished by MIPS eligible clinicians in 2019 downward by 4% or by up to 12% plus an exceptional performance bonus of up to 10%. As the program matures in the coming years, payment adjustment percentages may increase by as much as 37% to reward high performance and decrease by as much as 9% for lower performance.

For more information, please visit MIPScast.org.

To check if you must comply with MIPS or have any questions, please contact: mipscastinfo@altarum.org.