2021 membership deadlines
September 03, 2021
NACOR News

2021 membership deadlines

For clinicians to receive ASA Member pricing for 2021 NACOR reporting, clinicians must have an active 2021 ASA membership. Final payment for AQI services is determined by 2021 ASA membership status.

The deadline for new ASA memberships and renewals is Friday, October 1.

For more information, email AskAQI@asahq.org.

2021 NACOR reporting registration deadline approaching

The deadline to register for 2021 NACOR reporting (Quality, Benchmarking, and Basic) is Friday, October 1. New practices and practices re-enrolling should complete a registration form. If your practice is enrolled in Quality Concierge, no registration form is required.

For more information, email AskAQI@asahq.org.

Ready to submit data? Activate FTP account

For security reasons, all FTP accounts (for those who upload data to NACOR) will be disabled if no activity occurs within a 90-day window. If your practice is ready to start submitting data, you may not have access to log in to the FTP.

If you suspect your account has been disabled due to inactivity, submit a help desk ticket by emailing NACORSupport@asahq.org. FTP access has no impact on user access to the NACOR dashboard.

Individual provider consents

AQI's NACOR is collecting consent forms from each eligible clinician (EC) who is enrolled in 2021 individual quality reporting, as required by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). All providers must sign the consent form by January 31, 2022. 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.

CMS cancels MIPS facility-based scoring option for performance year (PY) 2021

The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced, in response to the ongoing COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE), a measure suppression policy in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) Program. This policy allows CMS to suppress the use of measure data if the agency determines that circumstances caused by the COVID-19 PHE significantly affected those measures and the resulting quality scores. CMS finalized this special scoring policy for FY 2022, resulting in a total performance score not being calculated for any hospital for FY 2022.

This finalized policy directly impacts the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) facility-based scoring in performance year 2021. CMS uses the total performance score from the Hospital VBP Program to calculate the previous year’s MIPS facility-based scores. Since the 2022 total performance score from the Hospital VBP will not be available, the MIPS facility-based score will not be able to be calculated for PY 2021.

While this may have little to no impact on most anesthesia groups reporting to MIPS, there may be some groups that rely on the facility-based score to satisfy their reporting requirements and will be directly affected by this policy.

Eligible clinicians and groups that rely on the facility-based score will need to submit data on MIPS quality measures to receive a score other than 0 for the quality performance category. CMS will automatically calculate a score for the cost performance category for facility-based clinicians and groups that meet the case minimum. If the facility-based clinicians or group does not meet the case minimum for any cost measures, the cost performance category will be reweighted to 0% and the weight redistributed to other performance categories. Facility-based clinicians and groups that find themselves without available or to report can request a performance category reweighting by submitting an extreme and uncontrollable circumstances (EUC) application.

For additional information on this announcement from CMS, please visit the Quality Payment Program website. For more information on how this could impact you or your group, refer to the 2021 Facility-Based Quick Start Guide.

2021 Reporting Deadlines

NACOR Registration: October 1, 2021

January through November 2021 data submission: January 31, 2022

Individual Quality Reporting Consent Submission: January 31, 2022

Improvement Activity Attestation: January 31, 2022

CMS Opt-Out for Individual Reporting: January 31, 2022

TIN/NPI Reconciliation: January 31, 2022

All data submissions: February 15, 2022

Contact AQI

Register: qcdr@asahq.org

NACOR Dashboard support: NACORSupport@asahq.org

Ask AQI: AskAQI@asahq.org



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