Holiday coverage
The ASA/AQI offices will be closed Thursday, December 24, through Friday, January 1. An AQI staff member will be available for urgent matters between December 28 and December 31. If you have an urgent issue, email askaqi@asahq.org, and a staff member will assist you.
Upcoming NACOR reporting deadlines
NACOR Quality reporting deadlines for the 2020 performance year are approaching quickly. Practices are encouraged to start sending quality data to AQI before the deadline to allow time for review and to submit corrected files if any errors are identified.
Quality data from January through November 2020 must be submitted by January 29, 2021. Also due on January 29 are individual quality reporting consent submissions and Improvement Activity attestations. The deadline to submit all 2020 data is February 15, 2021.
The 2020 data completeness requirements for those reporting MIPS are six measures, including one outcome measure, for 70 percent of the eligible cases over a 12-month period (1/1/20 - 12/31/20).
Individual provider consents
AQI's NACOR is collecting consent forms from each Eligible Clinician (EC) who is enrolled in 2020 individual quality reporting, as required by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). All providers must sign the consent form by January 31, 2021. AQI will only submit data to CMS for individual quality reporting for providers who have signed consent forms.
Scan and email consents (Exhibit A to the Addendum for Quality Reporting) to Javeria Ali. For practices that submitted paper consent forms and received receipt confirmation from AQI, no further action is required. For questions about consents, email Javeria Ali.
2021 NACOR XML Schema Changes
January 16, 2020 AQI will release the 2021 NACOR XML Schema updates. There will be two changes. The AQIXMLVersion number will be incremented to reflect the 2021 reporting year as well as two elements added: ProcedureName and ProcedureDescription. For 2021 these elements will not be required and may be omitted. We plan to make these fields required by 2022.
AQIXMLVersion enumeration changes
- 2020V1.0 → 2021V1.0
- 2020V1.0R → 2020V1.0R
New elements added (not required for 2021)
- ProcedureName
- ProcedureDescription
All data files must be submitted using the new format by April 6, 2021. For questions, please email askaqi@asahq.org.
Attesting to Improvement Activities via NACOR
Clinicians can start attesting to 2020 Improvement Activities in the NACOR Dashboard if the practice is reporting as a group. The NACOR dashboard will be updated for those who are reporting as individuals the week of December 7. In the step-by-step tutorial available under the 2020 Administrative Resources section on the AQI website, clinicians learn how to select and attest to an Improvement Activity.
As participants of NACOR, practices can attest to activity IA_PSPA_1: Participation in an AHRQ-listed patient safety organization. This is a medium-weighted activity worth 10 points. Practices also must document the date range that the Improvement Activity was performed in the practice list in the NACOR dashboard. For more information, email askaqi@asahq.org.