Claiming a Hardship Exception

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, CMS is granting sweeping hardship exceptions and implementing MIPS program flexibilities for the 2020 performance year. To learn more, visit the QPP website. This page outlines the following policy changes.

Automatic Neutral Payment Adjustments

CMS is offering automatic neutral payment adjustments to individual eligible clinicians (ECs) who do not submit data any or for only one MIPS category. Payment adjustments for the 2020 performance year affect 2022 Medicare payments. This means that ECs who don't submit any MIPS data (or who submitted quality data through claims-based reporting) will not be penalized in their 2022 Medicare payments.

The automatic neutral payment adjustment applies only to individual ECs, not to groups or virtual groups.

MIPS Category Reweighting

Individual ECs, groups, and virtual groups may request a MIPS category reweighting by filing an Extreme and Uncontrollable Circumstances Exception application by 5:00 p.m. (PT) on March 31, 2021. If CMS approves the exception application, ECs and groups will be scored on the categories for which they have submitted data. Categories for which they submit no data will be reweighted to zero. The exception application cannot be used to reweight categories for which data has already been submitted.