CMS Report on QPP Shows Increasing Involvement

by  Wyn Staheli, Director of Content - innoviHealth
Jan 6th, 2020

On January 6, 2020, CMS released the final data regarding participation in the 2018 Quality Payment Program. The following are some key points from their press release (emphasis added):

• Overall, MIPS participation rates increased between 2017 and 2018 from 95 percent to 98 percent, respectively.
• Small practices participation increased from 81% in 2017 to almost 90% in 2018.
• 98 percent of MIPS eligible clinicians received payment bonuses and only 2% received a negative payment adjustment
• The number of Qualifying Advanced Payment Model Participants (QPs) nearly doubled, from 99,076 clinicians in 2017 to 183,306 in 2018.

These facts seem to indicate that provider involvement in QPP, which includes both MIPS and APMs, is nearly complete. Since almost 98% of providers were above their performance thresholds, it would be also be safe to presume that the learning curve is over since most are reporting correctly and receiving good scores.

I was surprised by the fact that APM participation nearly doubled fro 2017 to 2018. Early CMS estimates for this program indicated that they felt like these numbers would increase and I believe that the results far exceed those early estimates.

For more detailed information, see the link in the References section below.