CMS Proposes 2018 Updates for Medicare Hospital Admissions

April 2017 ~

CMS issued a proposed rule to update 2018 Medicare payment and policies for patients admitted into the hospital.

According to the press release, the rule seeks to relieve regulatory burdens for providers, support patient-doctor relationships and encourage transparency, flexibility and innovation to transform the health care delivery system and the Medicare program.

CMS has said it is committed to transforming the health care delivery systems and Medicare program by maintaining a strong focus on patient-centered care, so providers can direct their time and resources to patients and improve outcomes.

In their effort to relieve providers of administrative burdens and encouraging patient choice, CMS is proposing:

• a one year regulatory moratorium on the payment policy threshold for patient admissions in long-term care hospitals while CMS continues to evaluate long-term care hospital policies
• to reduce clinical quality measure reporting requirements for hospitals that have implemented electronic health records.

Due to the combination of proposed payment rate increases and other proposed policies and payment adjustments, CMS projects that hospitals would see a total increase in inpatient operating prospective payments of 2.9% in fiscal year (FY) 2018.

CMS also predicts that based on the changes included in the proposed rule, payments to long-term care hospitals would decrease by approximately 3.75% in FY 2018.

In addition to the proposed rule, CMS also announced plans to release a Request for Information (RFI) to solicit ideas for regulatory, policy, practice and procedural changes to better achieve transparency, flexibility, program simplification and innovation. According to CMS, the feedback received will “inform discussion of future regulatory action related to inpatient and long-term hospitals.”

For complete details, see CMS’ announcement and summary for proposed 2018 payment and policy updates for Medicare hospital admissions, and releases a Request for Information.

Source(s): CMS MLN Connects; HealthcareFinance News; RevCycleIntelligence;