2026 MIPS Improvement Activities

Improve effectiveness, efficiency, and patient-centeredness of preventive and chronic care provided to empaneled patients.

Improve patient engagement through patient/clinician review of patient collected information or through assessment of a patient’s understanding, confidence, and ability to perform selfcare.

Become more equipped to help patients self-manage their chronic conditions.

Increase patient engagement, adherence to treatment plans, and self-management of chronic conditions through the availability of a patient portal within the electronic health record (EHR).

Ensure eligible clinicians' website content and tools more accessible to people with disabilities

Improve patients' experience of and satisfaction with care by gathering and applying learnings from relevant data to make care more patient-centered.

Increase use of evidence-based decision aids to encourage shared decision-making with beneficiaries.

Use active devices and platforms to allow the patient and the clinical care team to share information on a patient's status, adherence, comprehension, and indicators of clinical concern in a timely manner.

Increase engagement with patients, family, and caregivers and ensure care provided aligns with their priorities and needs.

Improve health outcomes by helping patients improve self-management.

Give patients with common chronic conditions opportunities to learn about selfmanagement topics and discuss shared concerns while improving efficiency in the delivery of quality care.

Increase the efficiency and effectiveness of visit time with patients, and promote patient engagement and satisfaction with care.

Provide additional direct support to patients in achieving their goals, thus improving patient satisfaction, adherence to plans, and health outcomes.

Help patients navigate the stress and risks associated with paying for healthcare, and, when relevant, help them explore alternative options that address their holistic needs.

Help patients navigate the stress and risks associated with paying for healthcare by providing information on the patients’ share of the costs for medications in the drug formulary; help patients explore alternative options that address their holistic needs.

Make it possible to use Patient Reported Outcomes (PRO) data as part of routine care, thus increasing patient engagement and health outcomes for all populations.

Improve eye health of underserved and/or high-risk populations, and empower patients in these populations to become more educated consumers of eye care.

MIPS eligible clinicians must implement at least one process improvement during treatment of patients taking antipsychotic medication related to one or more component(s) of appropriate antipsychotic medication assessment and monitoring. Components include: Personal and family history of obesity, diabetes, dyslipidemia, hypertension, or cardiovascular disease; Body…

Help patients at high risk for tobacco dependence and with behavioral or mental conditions to avoid or end addiction to tobacco.v

Improve the identification of depression among patients with behavioral or mental health conditions and sustain patient-centered support and treatment for those diagnosed with depression.

Increase patient-centered support and treatment for patients with conditions of behavioral or mental health conditions to prevent severe depression and suicide.

Support patients with behavioral health needs and poorly controlled chronic illnesses though integrated behavioral health services and the use of evidence-based tools or other initiatives.

Help patients better manage or overcome their alcohol and/or other substance abuse challenges through screenings and counseling.

Develop strategies to improve integration of behavioral health into primary care practices, ultimately improving patient-centeredness of care and health outcomes for mental health patients.

Ensure delivery of responsive care for patients and clinicians who have experienced physical or mental trauma.

Improve the well-being of clinicians and the quality and safety of care they deliver.

Improve outcomes by providing appropriate mood, anxiety and substance use disorder screenings and treatment during the perinatal and post-partum periods.

Improve outcomes by providing appropriate mental health and substance abuse screening for older adults.

Utilize preferred practice patterns within your practice to improve care coordination.

Develop and utilize processes that improve care coordination outcomes.

Develop, maintain, and share personalized care plans with at-risk patients to promote patientcentered care and improve patient experience.

Define and implement a standardized process for transitions of care that are relevant to the eligible clinician’s patient population.

Enhance communication during care transitions to improve patient outcomes by establishing standard operations, or preferred practice patterns, for transition communications.

Improve processes for care coordination and active referral management, thus making care more effective and efficient, preventing risky delays and under-treatment, and increasing patient satisfaction and adherence to treatment.

Utilize a program or process that provides an open exchange of necessary patient information between care teams and patients to guide patient care.

Participate in a Perioperative Surgical Home (PSH) model to improve coordination of patient care through the acute-care episode, recovery, and postacute care.

Improve whole-person care by establishing bidirectional communication between eligible primary care clinicians and behavioral health practices for shared patients.

Reduce avoidable hospital readmissions and make hospital stays less stressful and recovery periods more supportive for patients.

Improve quality of patient-clinician communication and interaction by attending training on relationship-centered care and communication techniques.

Increase the utilization of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA) patient relationship codes (PRC) using the applicable Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) modifiers on Medicare claims. Using PRC ensure that appropriate attribution is assigned to the appropriate eligible clinician. For example, it would be inappropriate to attribute the cost of an aortic aneurysm repair to the ophthalmologist who performed a cataract surgery in the same calendar year.

Improve health outcomes by expanding patient access to telehealth services that are delivered through standardized processes.

Develop an improvement plan informed by patient experience and satisfaction data, including any differences across demographic groups, so that eligible clinicians can use data-driven approaches to improve patient access and quality of care.

Use learnings from engagement with Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization (QIN-QIO) technical assistance to design, plan, and initiate implementation of new activities, ultimately improving access to services or care coordination.

Help CMS improve the content provided on the Quality Payment Program (QPP) website.

Improve quality of care and patient outcomes by ensuring clear and culturally relevant communication with patients with limited English proficiency.

Ensure timely treatment of patients from underserved populations, to help them achieve improved health outcomes.

Provide clinicians-in-training with diverse experiences, allowing them to gain deep understanding of the challenges facing eligible clinicians and patients in small practices or in underserved or rural areas.

Provide sustained support to communities facing the impact of disasters, filling immediate needs, and contributing to a faster, better recovery.

Provide sustained support to communities across the globe that need humanitarian volunteer support, thus helping to alleviate suffering, save lives, and maintain human dignity.

To create a transparent quality improvement initiative within your practice that engages all staff and/or patients and families that results in a culture that fosters a collaborative team approach.

Obtaining Patient-Centered Medical Home™ certification drives significant and sustainable practice improvements including population care quality, efficiency, and improved patient satisfaction all directly linked to better health outcomes.

Improve patient understanding and adherence while reducing the risk of medication errors and adverse drug events.

Improve quality of care and formal quality improvement and reporting for Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, populations served by Rural Health Clinics (RHC), and Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC).

Improve diabetes care by defining and documenting individualize glycemic control goals.

Improve specific chronic condition health outcomes for community populations served by an eligible clinician or practice by implementing evidencebased practices and partnership with a Quality Improvement Organization (QIO).

Improve understanding of targeted populations’ unique needs to tailor clinical treatments, address structural inequities, and better utilize community resources.

Improve health outcomes and patientcenteredness of care for patients at high-risk for adverse health outcomes or harm.

Use episodic care management to improve quality of care and communication across referrals and transitions of care.

Maximize the efficiency, effectiveness, and safety of care across settings by strengthening medication management.

Contribute to the development of evidencebased interventions, tools, or processes for improving health outcomes.

Help patients and families access the right community resources for improving/maintaining health, education, and self-sufficiency with support from community health workers.

Screen more patients at risk for diabetes.

Refer more patients with pre-diabetes to a recognized preventive program to help prevent or slow disease progression.

Increase the frequency and quality of advanced care planning and documentation.

Narrow gaps and inequities in care related to HIV prevention in clinical practice, and highlight HIV prevention guidelines, including recommendations to enhance prevention screening and PrEP awareness and use.

Help eligible clinicians align cervical cancer screening and management with up-to-date, evidencebased standards and guidelines as part of routine care.

Establish a process or procedure to increase rates of lung cancer screening through one or more of the following interventions: •Implementation of protocols that support enhanced documentation methods to identify eligible patients for lung cancer screening. ++ Example: A practice could embed electronic health record…

Implement standardized, evidence-based cardiovascular disease risk assessment and care management for a defined population in the clinician’s practice. The clinician or clinician group will apply standardized risk assessment and care management to a broad, clinician-defined patient population in the practice. The population can be defined…

To increase the detection rate of cognitive impairment, particularly in early stages, the MIPS eligible primary care clinician must perform the following activities: Determine his/her baseline detection rates for mild cognitive impairment (MCI), dementia, and cognitive impairment at either stage using the tool provided for…

MIPS eligible clinicians that practice primary care will include an oral health risk assessment and intraoral screening as part of a patient's primary care management. The MIPS eligible clinician will provide education and counseling to the patient to include the importance of oral health and…

Adopt and implement Patient Safety Organization (PSO) methodologies through data collection, analysis, reporting, and education to promote the quantifiable reduction of avoidable medical errors and deficiencies identified in the quality of care provided.

Maintain certifications with a Maintenance of Certification (MOC)-approved specialty board to increase/update knowledge and apply it to practice and safety improvements.

Obtain a Maintenance of Certification (MOC)-approved specialty board certification or other similar program to increase/update knowledge and apply it to practice and safety improvements.

Create the opportunity to i) Raise staff awareness about patient safety; ii) Elucidate and assess the current status of patient safety culture; iii) Identify strengths and areas for patient safety culture improvement; iv) Evaluate trends in patient safety culture change over time; and v) Evaluate the cultural impact of patient safety initiatives and interventions (from https://www.ahrq.gov/sops/about/faq.html#Q1).

Use qualified clinical data registry (QCDR) data for practice assessment and improvement with primary goal of addressing patient safety for targeted populations.

Improve the number of patients tracked and the precision of measurement for patient safety measures, thus allowing specialists to make evidencebased decisions about improving safety for their patients.

Gain the knowledge to "improve practice efficiency and ultimately enhance patient care, physician satisfaction and practice sustainability" (from https://edhub.ama-assn.org/stepsforward/pages/About).

Improve the quality of care provided, and health outcomes for patients, by participating in improvement activities designated by private payers.

Implement the Joint Commission’s Ongoing Professional Practice Evaluation with goal of identifying negative practice trends earlier.

Reduce inappropriate use of antimicrobials, thus playing a critical role in reducing microbial resistance and the incidence of antimicrobial-caused adverse drug reactions, all of which will help improve patient outcomes and the efficiency of spending.

Help eligible clinicians align diagnoses and treatment plans with up-to-date, evidence-based standards and guidelines as part of routine care, thus improving the appropriateness of the care they provide and the health outcomes of their patients.

Create opportunities to assess total cost of care and identify ways to reduce unnecessary costs.

Enhance the measurement of the quality of care, making quality data relevant at practice and panel levels, and use those data to implement effective quality improvement activities.

Expand and formalize quality improvement (QI) activities across the practice, ultimately leading to improvements in the quality of care and fostering a culture of participation among staff, including leadership.

Improve identification of patients who are at risk of falling; then reduce their risk and improve their health outcome, independence, and satisfaction with care.

Become better equipped to improve prescription practices and thus help reduce patients' risks of addiction and overdose.

Reduce inappropriate use of antimicrobials to help reduce microbial resistance and the incidence of antimicrobial-caused adverse drug reactions, all of which will help improve patient outcomes and the efficiency of spending.

Help eligible ordering clinicians easily obtain information on the cost of laboratory and radiography orders, allowing them to manage their costs strategically.

Allow primary care doctors to immediately tailor plans of care for patients to prevent further medication errors and achieve better outcomes in the future.

Complete an accredited performance improvement continuing medical education (CME) program, ultimately applying program content to address a specific quality or safety gap.

Educate patients regarding the risks of concurrent opioid and benzodiazepine use, thus reducing their risk of overdose.

Make Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Clinical Practice Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Pain via clinical decision support (CDS) part of eligible clinicians' workflow, thus improving prescription practices, protecting patients at risk for addition and/or overdose, and helping to address the opioid epidemic.

Improve health outcomes for patients with Lyme disease by leveraging clinical decision support (CDS) and training tools.

Develop a new data-collection field within patient safety reporting systems for AI-attributable events, which would include both actual harm as well as near misses. When an event is identified, a process to identify the cause and plan for future mitigation is documented. AI-attributable events are…

To promote the adoption of technology certified to the Security tags-summary of care send and Security tags-summary of care receive criteria at 45 CFR 170.315(b)(7) and (b)(8) in the ONC Health IT Certification Program.