Medicare Quality Pay Programs Extend Deadlines Due to Virus

Doctors and clinicians who participate in Medicare quality reporting programs will get deadline extensions and some reporting requirement exceptions as they battle coronavirus, CMS announced Sunday.

Participants in the Quality Payment Program, which rewards doctors for the quality of care they provide, were originally required to report some of their data to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services by March 31. That is now being extended to April 30.

“In granting these exceptions and extensions, CMS is supporting clinicians fighting Coronavirus on the front lines,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement. “The Trump Administration is cutting bureaucratic red tape so the healthcare delivery system can direct its time and resources toward caring for patients.”

In other exceptions, CMS said it won’t count data from the first half of 2020 when evaluating the care provided by ambulatory surgical centers, hospital inpatient and outpatient programs, purchasing programs, and other participants.

Not requiring quality measure reporting will lessen the burden on overwhelmed doctors, but it could also lead to worse patient outcomes because of a lack of accountability. It also means that hospital’s Medicare reimbursements won’t be penalized for worse outcomes.
(normally payment is adjusted based on quality measures)