Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Medicare Proposes Payment Increases For Skilled-Nursing And Inpatient Rehab Facilities, Hospice Care
Modern Healthcare: CMS Proposes Raising Payment Rates For Hospice, Skilled Nursing And Rehab
The CMS has dropped three payment rules that propose increased payments to skilled-nursing facilities, inpatient rehabilitation facilities and hospice care, and implemented new quality measures. The agency Thursday proposed nearly doubling the increase skilled-nursing facilities received last year. This would amount to a $800 million bump. Last year they only received a 1.2% Medicare rate increase, leading to $430 million in higher payments from the previous year. Medicare would pay out $125 million a year more to rehabilitation facilities while those facilities would face about $5.2 million in costs related to new quality-reporting requirements. (Dickson, Meyer and Schencker, 4/21)
The Tennessean: Lamar Alexander Sponsors Bill To Boost Medicare Payments
U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander is sponsoring bipartisan legislation in companion to a House bill to change a formula that is used in determining how much hospitals get in reimbursement from Medicare. The bill establishes a 0.874 as the national floor for the average wage index, or AWI, which is used as a multiplier for determining what Medicare reimburses hospitals. ... Raising the floor on the AWI would help rural and urban hospitals as they face planned reductions in Medicare payments in the coming years under tenets of the Affordable Care Act, which was designed to offset the decreased payments with expanded Medicaid payments. (Fletcher, 4/21)
