MGMA to HHS: Provide flexibilities for surprise billing requirements

In a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), MGMA called for additional flexibilities for group practices as new surprise billing requirements are implemented on Jan. 1, 2022. The final rules implementing requirements related to surprise billing were released less than three months before their effective date, not allowing practices sufficient time to understand and implement new workflows in compliance with these new requirements.

MGMA recently published a surprise billing FAQ and launched a new surprise billing landing page containing member-exclusive resources, advocacy materials, and federal resources to help guide practices as they begin complying with the new requirements in the new year.

Dec. 31: Upcoming MIPS deadlines

As 2021 comes to a close, clinicians must prepare for the upcoming deadlines for the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) program. There are two key deadlines on Dec. 31, 2021:

• EUC Application deadline for groups, virtual groups and APM entities, and
• Virtual group election for PY 2022

While the automatic and extreme and uncontrollable circumstances (EUC) policy applies to individual MIPS clinicians due to the COVID-19 pandemic, groups, virtual groups, and APM entities must apply to have performance categories reweighted for PY 2021. Virtual group election must be made before the start of PY 2022. More information about both of these deadlines may be found on the Quality Payment Program website.