Association between Anesthesia Group Size and Merit-Based Incentive Payment System Scores

The Merit-Based Incentive Payment System was introduced in 2017 by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the primary U.S. public insurer. MIPS ties payments to a score determined by four categories: cost, improvement activities, promoting interoperability, and quality. Scores for each category are aggregated across all physicians in a group, who all then receive the same score. Using publicly available data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, we find that larger group size is associated with higher MIPS scores. This result is not dependent on academic affiliation, and is robust to a variety of specifications.