In yet another attempt to offset damage due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has made “unprecedented” changes for providers taking part in Medicare quality reporting programs.
CMS implemented additional “extreme and uncontrollable circumstances policy exceptions and extensions” for a variety of data submission deadlines, while making other submissions optional.
Fourth-quarter data submission will be optional for the participants in the Skilled Nursing Facility Quality Reporting Program, as well as those in the SNF Value-Based Purchasing Program.
Also, 2019 data for participants of the Medicare Shared Savings Program Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are to be delayed a month, to April 30. The agency said it was “evaluating options for providing relief” regarding participation and data submission for 2020.
“No data reflecting services provided January 1, 2020 through June 30, 2020 will be used in CMS’s calculations for the Medicare quality reporting and value-based purchasing programs,” the agency said in a statement March 22.
“CMS recognizes that quality measure data collection and reporting for services furnished during this time period may not be reflective of their true level of performance on measures such as cost, readmissions and patient experience during this time of emergency and seeks to hold organizations harmless for not submitting data during this period.”
The agency also granted providers an additional resource for better coding on Section GG of the Minimum Data Set.
It released three video tutorial videos, which can be found at CMS.gov under an entry called “SNF Quality Reporting Program Training.”
