CMS Releases MIPS Quality Measure Validation Document

CMS recently released its 2022 Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) Eligible Measures Applicability (EMA) and Denominator Reduction User Guide for the MIPS Quality Performance Category.

Under MIPS, eligible clinicians earn a payment adjustment for Part B covered professional services based on their performance across different categories.

To fulfill the requirements of the Quality category, MIPS eligible clinicians must submit 6 quality measures, including an outcome or high priority measure, or a complete Specialty Measure set.

EMA is the process that CMS uses to validate whether a clinician who reported less than 6 measures truly had no other applicable measures available to them.

Specialty sets are recommended subsets of quality measures that CMS releases each year to help clinicians navigate the large inventory of MIPS measures and identify those most relevant to a specialist.

Note that if a Specialty Set includes fewer than 6 measures, a clinician is only required to report the measures in that set to qualify for full credit in the Quality category. As reflected in the newly released guide, for the 2022 MIPS performance year, there is an Electrophysiology Specialty Set that consists of only the following two measures:

• Cardiac Tamponade and/or Pericardiocentesis Following Atrial Fibrillation Ablation
• Infection within 180 Days of Cardiac Implantable Electronic Device (CIED) Implantation, Replacement, or Revision

More information about these measures can be found using the 2022 MIPS Quality Measure search tool.