What is the role of improvement activities in MIPS?

• A. To penalize practices for poor care.
• B. To reward individual clinicians only with financial bonuses.
• C. To reward practice-level improvements that enhance care coordination, safety, and population health.
• D. To simplify reporting requirements.

Answer: (C)

Improvement activities in MIPS are meant to recognize and reward changes implemented at the practice level that improve care coordination, patient safety, and population health. Rather than focusing on individual bonuses or penalties, this category incentives teams to adopt concrete process improvements across the clinic—like better care coordination protocols, safety workflows, or population health programs—and to document and attest to those improvements. This emphasis on practice-level, system-wide changes explains why the best answer emphasizes practice-level improvements that enhance care coordination, safety, and population health. The other options don’t fit: it’s not about penalizing care, it isn’t solely about individual financial bonuses, and it doesn’t aim to simplify reporting.