For physicians who haven’t had time to pore over the 2,300 pages of the final rule implementing the Quality Payment Program (QPP), established by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is providing help.

CMS has announced both a webinar and a call to provide more information on the MACRA final rule, which was released late last week. The final rule puts in place a new Medicare physician payment system for more than 600,000 clinicians across the country.

The agency announced plans to host a webinar on October 26 at 2 p.m. ET to provide an overview of its QPP, which includes two payment tracks for physicians: the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and Advanced Alternative Payment Model (APM) incentives. The webinar is free and to register, click here. The session will include a question and answer session.

CMS will also host a November 15 call at 1:30 p.m. ET about the MACRA program. To register, click hereFiercePracticeManagement will bring you news from these events.

The new payment system replaces the current Sustainable Growth Rate formula. The new rule takes effect on January 1, 2017. 

One change in the final rule: Fewer physician practices must participate. Under the final rule, CMS has allowed more small practices to be excluded from the program and not receive penalties. CMS raised the low-volume requirements so clinicians with $30,000 or less in allowed Medicare changes, or 100 or fewer Medicare patients, are exempt. The threshold was $10,000 in the proposed rule.

Practices will begin submitting data to CMS in 2017, with payment adjustments coming in 2019.