Tag: Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program

CMS Proposes Changes to Inpatient and Long-term Care Hospital Policy and Payments

On Apr. 17, 2015, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a proposed rule to update fiscal year (FY) 2016 Medicare payment policies and rates under the Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) and the Long-Term Care Hospital (LTCH) Prospective Payment System (PPS). The proposed rule, which would apply to approximately 3,400 acute care hospitals and approximately 435 LTCHs, would affect discharges occurring on or after Oct.1, 2015.

The IPPS pays hospitals for services provided to Medicare beneficiaries using a national base payment rate, adjusted for a number of factors that affect hospitals’ costs, including the patient’s condition and market conditions to the hospital’s geographic area.

The proposed rule proposes policies that continue a commitment to increasingly shift Medicare payments from volume to value. The administration has set measurable goals and a timeline to move the Medicare program, and the healthcare system at large, toward paying providers based on the quality, rather than the quantity of care they give patients.

This fact sheet discusses major provisions of the proposed rule.

Background

CMS pays acute care hospitals (with a few exceptions specified in the law) for inpatient stays under the IPPS and long-term care hospitals under the LTCH PPS. Under these two payment systems, CMS generally sets payment rates prospectively for inpatient stays based on the patient’s diagnosis and severity of illness. A hospital receives a single payment for the case based on the payment classification – MS-DRGs under the IPPS and MS-LTC-DRGs under the LTCH PPS – assigned at discharge.

By law, CMS is required to update payment rates for IPPS hospitals annually, and to account for changes in the costs of goods and services used by these hospitals in treating Medicare patients, as well as for other factors. This is known as the hospital “market basket.” LTCHs are paid according to a separate market basket based on LTCH-specific goods and services.

Changes and Updates in FY 2016 Policies

Proposed Changes to Payment Rates under IPPS

The proposed increase in operating payment rates for general acute care hospitals paid under the IPPS that successfully participate in the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) Program and are meaningful electronic health record (EHR) users is 1.1 percent. This reflects the projected hospital market basket update of 2.7 percent adjusted by -0.6 percentage point for multi-factor productivity and an additional adjustment of -0.2 percentage point in accordance with the Affordable Care Act; like last year, the rate is further decreased by a proposed 0.8 percent for a documentation and coding recoupment adjustment required by the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012.

Hospitals that do not successfully participate in the Hospital IQR Program and do not submit the required quality data will be subject to a one-fourth reduction of the market basket update. Also, the law requires that the update for any hospital that is not a meaningful EHR user will be reduced by one-half of the market basket update in FY 2016.

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HHS’ Vision Casting and the Private Sector’s Positive Response

Guest post by Ken Perez, vice president of healthcare policy, Omnicell.

Ken Perez
Ken Perez

We’ve often seen the U.S. federal government announce its intent to drive major changes in the way the healthcare system is run, only to have the private sector respond in a tepid or negative manner.

That was not the case at a January 26 Department of Health and Human Services meeting, at which HHS Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced concrete goals and an aggressive timeline for moving Medicare payments from fee for service to fee for value. Nearly two dozen leaders representing consumers, insurers, providers and business leaders were in attendance and clearly supportive of the vision cast by Burwell. Notably, high-ranking representatives from the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) were among the participants.

The announcement was a landmark one. For the first time in the history of the Medicare program, HHS has communicated quantified goals for pushing a significantly greater share of Medicare payments through alternative payment models, such as accountable care organizations (ACOs) and bundled payments. Such payments will rise from 20 percent ($72.4 billion) of Medicare payments in 2014 to 30 percent ($113 billion) in 2016 and 50 percent ($213 billion) in 2018—a compound annual growth rate of 31 percent over the five-year period.

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