Industry associations across facilities have targeted how the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services calculate the market basket used to fix their Medicare payments for fiscal year 2024.
In commenting on the proposed rules for updating reimbursements for nursing homes, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, and inpatient psychiatric hospitals, providers and trade groups have urges CMS to recognize macroeconomic trends such as inflation and other challenges facing the healthcare industry. These include workforce shortages and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. These comments are in line with pleas from the hospital industry for draft regulations to establish inpatient reimbursements.
“We remain concerned that CMS’s market basket approach continues to show a lag in recognizing inflationary trends and may not fully capture the growing cost of care,” the association said. The US hospital wrote in a comment letter the proposed rule for a skilled nursing facility’s future payment system.
Commentators wrote that the CMS proposal to maintain the maximum 5% reduction in the wage index did not reflect labor market conditions. “We encourage CMS to revise the pay tables in the final rule to include actual values for those providers subject to the limit,” the National Association for Behavioral Health said. write.
Industry representatives also asked CMS to discontinue changes to its optional and value-based billing and quality reporting programs. For example, they describe the need to track staff and patients’ COVID-19 immunization status as overwhelming.
AHA warns that CMS’s proposed health equity adjustment to Medicare reimbursements would disadvantage rural providers and those operating in states that have not yet expanded Benefits healthcare under the Affordable Care Act. Under the rule that proposes an inpatient psychiatric facility’s future payment system, providers will be judged in part on the number of eligible Medicare-Medicaid beneficiaries they treat.
CMS should withdraw its proposal to include nursing staff revenue as a measure of quality while nursing homes are struggling to find staff, the long-term care association LeadingAge wrote. The American Nurses Association, a labor union, urged CMS to delay the policy.
