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Better Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) quality scores were rarely associated with lower rates of hospital complications during the first year of program implementation, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open.
Researchers studied a cohort of over 38,000 specialty physicians using CMS’s Physician Compare and Hospital Compare data from 2017, the first year of MIPS. Few physician specialties had MIPS quality scores that resulted in better surgical outcomes when compared to hospital-wide measures of individual postoperative complications, readmissions, and failure to rescue.
In a few specialties, researchers did find statistically significant associations between MIPS quality scores and surgical outcomes. But the differences were so slight that they do not provide a strong case for MIPS’s value.