GAO Report on the MIPS Program

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released a report, "Provider Performance and Experiences Under the Merit-based Incentive Payment System" (MIPS). Based on request from Congressional committees/subcommittees or statutory requirements, the GAO provides Congress, heads of executive agencies, and the public with fact-based, non-partisan information used to improve government.

The report was informed in part by experts and informants, including Department of Medicine Associate Chair for Health Systems and VSSL Director Dr. Joshua Liao. This adds to a larger body of MIPS analysis and evaluation work led by Dr. Liao in VSSL, spanning several years and encompassing multiple aspects of the program. Installments of this work include the following:

• Physician perspectives on MIPS in the program's first year

• How physicians in the first year of MIPS thought the program improves value

• Financial opportunities in MIPS

• Implications of MIPS scoring

• MIPS APMs

• Implications from MIPS Year 1 findings

• Supporting small practices in MIPS

• Need for more episode cost measures in MIPS

• How the program could affect safety-net practices

• Ways to improve rather than scrap the program

• Analysis of physician group performance in the second year of MIPS