By the EHR Association’s Value-Based Care and Quality Programs Workgroup

In CMS’s 2026 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule, one theme stands out clearly: the joint goals of stability and steady transformation. 

While the agency is not upending the Quality Payment Program (QPP) or the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) Program, it is continuing to refine them with updates that reflect CMS’s ongoing effort to simplify, modernize, and prepare healthcare for a future in which MIPS Value Pathways (MVPs) and advanced interoperability expectations are the norm. Doing so means fewer shifts and, as a result, easier adaptation for EHR systems and clinical workflows, reducing the effort required for annual measure changes. The EHR Association applauds CMS’s effort to simplify the program and reduce burden.