Earlier this year, the AANS and the CNS submitted comments to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on a proposed Surgical Care Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) Value Pathway (MVP). MVPs are a new MIPS reporting pathway available to clinicians. They are intended to reduce reporting burdens, provide clinicians with more meaningful performance feedback and help prepare them to participate in alternative payment models. While MVPs are optional, CMS intends to make them mandatory in the future and continues to introduce additional MVPs to fill existing gaps in specialties and patient populations.
In rejecting the proposed Surgical Care MVP, the neurosurgical groups were highly critical given that the MVP arbitrarily combines measures that assess numerous unrelated surgical specialties (e.g., general surgery, neurosurgery, cardiac surgery and breast surgery) and provides little value to participating clinicians and their patients. The AANS and CNS also voiced concern that CMS did not consult relevant clinical stakeholders when developing this MVP and carelessly assumed certain measures broadly apply to all surgeons based on their title alone.
Click here to read the letter.
