The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has taken steps to reduce the number of physicians in the U.S. who will be affected by the new Medicare payment quality reporting requirements. Previously, CMS has said physician practices that billed Medicare less than $30,000 a year or saw fewer than 100 individual Medicare patients annually wouldn’t have to meet new quality reporting requirements. In the interest of reducing the compliance burden on small practices, CMS now says physicians billing less than $90,000 or having fewer than 200 patient visits a year will be exempt from the requirements of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA). As a result of these exemptions and those pertaining to physicians participating in leading-edge alternative payment models, only an estimated 40% of the 1.5 million physicians active in the Medicare program will be participating in MACRA’s Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), according to CMS estimates. For more information, visit www.cms.gov.