Proposed FY 2020 Medicare IPPS and LTCH Update Released

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have released an extensive and very lengthy 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 (FY) 2020.  Among many items, the proposal addresses the following issues: (1) the hospital market basket increase; (2) the MS-DRG documentation and coding increase; (3) revisions to the calculation of the area wage index; (4) new technology add-on payments; (5) Medicare uncompensated care payments; (6) hospital-acquired conditions; (7) the hospital readmission program; (8) the hospital inpatient quality reporting system (9) the hospital value-based purchasing program; (10) the Medicare and Medicaid promoting interoperability programs; and (11) changes to the LTCH Prospective Payment System. CMS projects this proposal would apply to approximately 3,300 acute care hospitals and to approximately 390 LTCH facilities. CMS states that the rate increase, together with other changes to IPPS payment policies, would increase Medicare spending on inpatient hospital services in FY 2020 by approximately $4.7 billion. For more details, see today’s first Financial Feature.