Coronavirus Update: CMS Grants Blanket Exceptions and Extensions Across Its Quality Measurement Programs

In response to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced today it is granting a range of data reporting exceptions and extensions across its quality reporting and value-based payment programs for hospitals, post-acute care facilities and clinicians. Specifically:

• CMS is making it optional to submit data from the 4th quarter of 2019 (October through December), as well as the first two quarters of 2020 (January through March, and April through June); and
• CMS will not use data from Jan. 1, 2020 through June 30, 2020 to calculate performance in its quality reporting and value-based purchasing programs.

CMS indicates these policy changes are intended to relieve provider data reporting burden during this emergency, and to ensure it does not tie provider performance or payment to a time period that does not represent their true quality performance. CMS says it will continue to monitor the impact of the situation and assess additional options for providing relief.

CMS’s specific quality measurement program exception and extension policies are outlined in the tables below.

If you have further questions, please contact Akin Demehin, AHA director of policy, at ademehin@aha.org.