CMS Grants MIPS Exemption for Providers Affected by California Wildfires

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently granted an automatic Extreme and Uncontrollable Circumstances (EUC) exemption from reporting to the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) for those clinicians affected by the California wildfires. Following the official public health emergency and disaster declarations, CMS is applying the automatic EUC for those affected from both the 2024 and 2025 performance periods (2024: Jan 2- Mar 31, 2025, and 2025: Jan 2-Mar 31, 2026). 

The EUC will be automatically applied to those MIPS-eligible clinicians in areas affected by the fires and will result in all four performance categories being reweighted to 0 percent. It will result in a neutral payment adjustment for the 2026 and 2027 MIPS payment years.  

Two important things to note: 1) If providers in these geographic areas submit data on two or more performance categories for either/both performance years, they will be scored and not be exempted from payment adjustments; 2) The EUC policy does not apply to groups, subgroups, virtual groups, and APM entities unless they submit an EUC exception application.  

For more information, please see the following resources: 2024 MIPS Automatic EUC Policy Fact Sheet (PDF, 401KB) and 2025 MIPS Automatic EUC Policy Fact Sheet (PDF, 326KB).  

ASCP will continue to monitor this and other payment policy issues affecting our members.