CMS Releases Final Inpatient Psychiatric Facilities PPS Update for FY 2019

CMS has issued a rule to update the Medicare Inpatient Psychiatric Facilities (IPFs) Prospective Payment System for fiscal year 2019. For IPFs, CMS finalizes a net payment increase of 1.1% or $50 million in FY 2019 compared to FY 2018. This includes a 2.9% market-basket update, offset by cuts of 0.8% for productivity and a further Affordable Care Act-mandated cut of 0.75%, as well as a decrease of 0.24% due to updating the high-cost outlier threshold. While CMS originally proposed to remove eight measures from the IPF Quality Reporting Program, it only finalizes the removal of five measures. For more details, see today’s third Financial Feature.