Health Affairs March 2, 2021
The Biden administration faces a major health policy decision: What to do with the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS)? Since 2017, Medicare has used MIPS to engage clinicians around the country in value-based care. The program is historically significant: As the largest pay-for-performance program in US history, MIPS replaced long-standing fee schedule updates that clinicians received through the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate and periodic legislative fixes. Unfortunately, MIPS has drawn criticism from the policy community because of design flaws. Some physicians have also expressed disagreement with the program design and concern about unintended consequences.
Preserving The Spirit Of MIPS
The Biden administration could address these issues by simply eliminating MIPS; that was the recommendation several years ago from groups...