CMS Clarifies Scope of New COVID-19 Improvement Activity for 2020 MIPS

Recently, the CMS announced the approval of a new COVID-19-focused activity that clinicians can use to earn credit under Medicare’s Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) improvement activities performance category. There are two separate ways that clinicians can receive credit for this new improvement activity:

• A clinician may participate in a COVID-19 clinical trial and have the information entered into a data platform for that study; or
• A clinician participating in the care of COVID-19 patients may submit clinical COVID-19 patient data to a clinical data registry for purposes of future study.

According to CMS, clinicians may attest to this new improvement activity in 2020 if they treat patients diagnosed with COVID-19 and report their data to a registry — including a Qualified Clinical Data Registry — or if they participate in a COVID-19 clinical trial utilizing a drug or biological product to treat a patient with a COVID-19 infection and report their findings through a clinical data repository or clinical data registry.

Click here for additional information about this and other recent COVID-19-related changes to MIPS.