Skip to main content

  • MIPS 2021—Quality Scoring: Bonuses for High-Priority Measures and CEHRT

    Add to My Bookmarks

    This content is excerpted from EyeNet’s MIPS 2021; also see the Academy’s MIPS hub page.

    In addition to scoring achievement points based on your per­formance rate, you may also be able to score bonus points.

    Bonus points for reporting high-priority measures. You get no bonus points for your first high-priority measure, but for additional high-priority measures, you get:

    • 2 points for an outcome or patient experience measure, and
    • 1 point for an appropriate use, care coordina­tion, efficiency, patient safety, or opioid-related measure. 

    You must meet the data submission thresh­olds. To score high-priority bonus point(s) for a measure, you must meet both the case minimum requirement (at least 20 patients) and the data completeness criteria (at least 70% of denominator-eligible patients) and you also need a performance rate greater than zero.

    You can score high-priority bonus points for measures that don’t contribute to your measure achievement points total. If you report more than six quality measures, CMS will base your total measure achievement points on the six measures that have the highest achievement points scores, but you also can earn high-priority bonus points for quality measures that aren’t among those six.

    Note: There is no bonus point for the first high-priority measure because you are required to report at least one outcome measure (or, if no outcome measure is available, an alternate high-priority measure).

    Bonus points for using CEHRT. You can earn 1 bonus point for each measure that you report electronically, even if you don’t meet the data submission thresholds. This can include measures reported via IRIS Registry–EHR integration or your EHR vendor. However, you must use either a 2015-edition CEHRT or a 2015-edition Cures Update CEHRT to collect your measure data, and you must meet CMS’ criteria for “end-to-end electronic reporting.”

    Up to 12 (or 14) bonus points. Your high-priority bonus is typically capped at 6 points or—in the unlikely event that you are scored on the HWR measure—7 points. The CEHRT bonus is capped in the same way.

    Previous: Quality Scoring: Some Benchmarks Are “Flat”

    Next: Quality Scoring: You Can Earn an Improvement Percent Score 

    DISCLAIMER AND LIMITATION OF LIABILITY: Meeting regulatory requirements is a complicated process involving continually changing rules and the application of judgment to factual situations. The Academy does not guarantee or warrant that regulators and public or private payers will agree with the Academy’s information or recommendations. The Academy shall not be liable to you or any other party to any extent whatsoever for errors in, or omissions from, any such information provided by the Academy, its employees, agents, or representatives.

    COPYRIGHT© 2021, American Academy of Ophthalmology, Inc.® All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. American Academy of Ophthalmic Executives® and IRIS® Registry, among other marks, are trademarks of the American Academy of Ophthalmology®.

    All of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO)–developed quality measures are copyrighted by the AAO’s H. Dunbar Hoskins Jr., MD, Center for Quality Eye Care (see terms of use).