Dialysis providers will receive a 3.1% pay increase from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2023, the agency announced in a final rule issued Monday.
CMS will increase the base rate paid for dialysis services from $7.67 to $265.57. Hospital-based end-stage renal disease providers will receive an estimated 3.1% increase in payments and private facilities will receive 3%, according to CMS. By 2023, the agency will also permanently ban ESRD establishments from reducing workers’ wages by more than 5% annually, regardless of the circumstances causing the drop, according to the regulation.
The agency will remove seven metrics from its quality improvement plan next year to account for the impact of COVID-19, including reading rates and the center’s hemodialysis consumer experience survey. heart. CMS collects and posts data but does not count them in payments. Officials will rely on 2019 data for these measures to gauge the quality of suppliers.
Starting in 2025, CMS will also take into account healthcare workers’ COVID-19 immunization status when assessing the quality of facilities. Providers must begin reporting that information by 2023.
CMS is also finalizing a plan to convert a standardized transfusion rate reporting measure, which tracks the number of cells transfused a facility performs against the national average, into a baseline clinical metric. from 2025.
The clinical measure for hypercalcemia – when blood calcium levels are too high – will be converted to a reported metric by 2025. CMS will work to identify alternative measures that more accurately reflect Improve the quality.
CMS also updated the scoring method and clarified the patient education service requirements for the ESRD Treatment Choice Model. The Innovation Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Mandatory Payments Initiative begins in January 2021 and runs through June 2027.
CMS revised its model last year to give providers an incentive to reduce disparities in home dialysis and kidney transplant rates. The agency does not anticipate the rule changes will ultimately affect the model’s net savings, which are expected to reach $28 million over its 6.5-year life.
The agency declined to adjust payments for three new dialysis-related products.
