Proposed FY 2019 Medicare IPPS and LTCH update issued

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has released a proposed rule to update both the Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) and the Long-Term Care Hospital (LTCH) Prospective Payment System for fiscal year 2019. CMS projects that total Medicare spending on inpatient hospital services, including capital, will increase by about $4 billion in FY 2019. This compares to CMS’s projection for FY 2018 of an increase of $2.4 billion. The proposed increase for general acute care hospitals that successfully participate in the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) Program and are meaningful electronic health record (EHR) users would be approximately 1.75 percent. CMS is proposing an annual update to the LTCH PPS standard Federal payment rate of 1.15 percent. For more details, see today’s first Financial Feature.