AAFP Asks CMS to Suspend MIPS Program and Delay MIPS 2019 Reporting Deadline

Given the fast moving nature of the COVID-19 and the changing virtual times, we’re going to try out some new changes here at Healthcare IT Today as well. While we’ll still continue to offer our regular articles that dive into various topics as we’ve been doing with our COVID-19 Provider Coverage, there seems to be a space for us to share important news and updates we think you need to know about that might not require a full article or we don’t have the time to cover in depth.

With that in mind, consider this our first entry in shorter form articles that share important news, offers, insights, solutions, ect. Hopefully, we can help you filter through all the noise with just the most important topics.

In this news, Shawn Martin, CEO Designee of AAFP (The American Academy of Family Physicians), has sent a letter to CMS asking them to suspend the MIPS program for 2020 so that family physicians can focus on the crisis at hand. Here’s the request and letter:

In the letter they ask CMS to extend the deadline for MIPS 2019 performance from March 31, 2020 until the end of 2020. They also ask CMS to use the already developed policy around “extreme and uncontrollable circumstances” that would provide an exception for providers.

We’ll keep an eye out on news from CMS of any suspension or delays with MIPS reporting. This feels like something they will eventually do, but they’re probably overwhelmed with all of their other COVID-19 measures.

Side Note: Is the best way to share ideas with CMS and HHS still a letter like this one from AAFP? Maybe this process is something we can improve during the pandemic too. Seems slow and antiquated to use a letter like this from both a submitter’s perspective and from CMS processing what else they should be doing.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

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