The CMS is encouraging clinicians who are participating in the Quality Payment Program (QPP), such as Physicians, Assistants, Nurse Practitioners and others, to who are contributing to scientific research and evidence to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. CMS will reward with credit in the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). A performance -based track of QPP that incentivized quality and value, for participation in a clinical trial and reporting clinical information by attesting to the new COVID-19 Clinical Trials improvement activity. This action will provide vital data to help drive enhancement in patient care and improve innovative best practices to manage the spread of COVID-19 within communities.
CMS Administrator Seema Verma said, “The best scientific and medical minds in the world are working night and day to find treatments to combat Coronavirus. But without solid data, their efforts are liable to run up against a brick wall. At the direction of President Trump, CMS is supporting efforts of researchers to obtain solid, actionable data to accelerate the development of new treatments and our understanding of the coronavirus. Today’s action encourages clinicians to report data that will help us monitor the spread of the virus, find innovative medical solutions, and unleash scientific discovery as we seek to overcome this terrible disease.”
In order to receive credit for the new MIPS COVID-19 Clinical Trials improvement activity, clinicians must attest that they participate in a COVID-19 clinical trial using a drug or biological product to treat a patient with a COVID-19 infection and report their findings through a clinical data repository or clinical data registry for the duration of the study.
This CMS’s new enhancement activity providing flexibility in the type of clinical trial. This may include the traditional double-bling placebo-controlled trial to an adaptive or pragmatic design that simplify workflow and clinical practice. Clinicians who report this activity will automatically earn half of the total credit needed to earn a maximum score in the MIPS improvement activities performance category, which counts as 15 percent of the MIPS final score.
For example, clinical trials could include those conducted by the National Institute of Health (NIH). Clinicians could also report through a clinical data repository, such as Oracle’s COVID-19 Therapeutic Learning System. Oracle has developed and donated a system to the U.S. government that allows clinicians and patients at no cost to record the effectiveness of promising COVID-19 drug therapies. Having clinicians use an open source data tool to submit their findings will bring the results of their research to the forefront of healthcare much faster, leading to improvements in care delivery and the ability to treat COVID-19 patients.
This action, along with the unprecedented regulatory flexibilities recently introduced, is just one part of the agency’s efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic. CMS, in coordination with the White House Coronavirus Task Force, remains committed to reducing regulator burden and supporting clinicians, stakeholders, and the health care community to identify unique solutions that enhance care for patients and further mitigate the spread of the virus.
This action, and earlier CMS actions in response to the COVID-19 virus, are part of the ongoing White House Task Force efforts. To keep up with the important work the Task Force is doing in response to COVID-19 click here www.coronavirus.gov. For information specific to CMS, please visit the Current Emergencies Website.
To view a database of privately and publicly funded clinical studies currently being conducted on corona virus visit: https://clinicaltrials.gov/
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