The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have recently proposed a new rule for the Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS). On April 18, 2011, CMS released a set of proposed changes to the IPPS, the system of payment for the operating costs of inpatient stays in acute care hospitals under Medicare Part A (Hospital Insurance) based on prospectively set rates.
Increasingly, CMS is adding programs to IPPS that tie reimbursement to measured performance in some way. The proposed rule contains changes to two existing programs: Inpatient Quality Reporting and Hospital-Acquired Conditions Payment Limitation, which introduces how CMS proposes to operate the new Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program beginning in 2012, and adds a new measurement domain to the Value-Based Purchasing Program in year two (rules for year one were already finalized).
For more information on the proposed changes, click here.
