The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently announced it would be giving physician groups participating in the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) more time to apply for an extreme and uncontrollable circumstance waiver due to the ongoing disruptions the COVID-19 public health emergency.

Physician groups, virtual groups and alternative payment model (APM) entities now have until March 31, 2022, to apply for a waiver to have their data re-weighted to account for COVID-19 impacts. Additionally, physician groups that do not submit data will not receive a penalty. The previous deadline was Dec. 31, 2021.

As previously reported, the Extreme and Uncontrollable Circumstances (EUC) Hardship Exception policy will be also be automatically applied to all MIPS eligible clinicians for the 2021 performance period (2023 payment year). CMS will automatically identify and re-weight all 4 MIPS performance categories to 0% and apply a neutral payment adjustment for the 2023 MIPS payment year.

For more detailed information on the automatic EUC policy and CMS announcement, click here.