CMS announces payment changes for skilled nursing, hospice, rehab facilities

In a flurry of announcements July 28, CMS released its payment and policy changes for three Medicare payment systems in fiscal year 2017: skilled nursing facilities, hospice benefit and inpatient rehabilitation facilities.

Skilled nursing facilities

• Projects payment increase of $920 million, or 2.4 percent.
• Changes to quality reporting program, with new quality measures for payment determination beginning in 2018: Medicare spending per beneficiary, discharge to community, and potentially preventable 30-day post-discharge readmission.
• A separate quality measure beginning in 2020 for medication reconciliation, titled “Drug Regimen Review Conducted with Follow-Up for Identified Issues."
• A final rule on the value-based purchasing program for skilled nursing facilities, which will begin in fiscal year 2019.

Medicare hospice benefit

• Projects payment increase of $350 million, or 2.1 percent.
• Final rule on the experience of care survey, including requiring hospices to collect survey data on ongoing basis in 2017 for 2019 payment update.
• Finalizes new quality measures for 2017, titled “Hospice Visits When Death is Imminent” and “Hospice and Palliative Care Composite Process Measure.”
• Public reporting of hospice data to begin via compare site in 2017.

Inpatient rehabilitation facilities

• Projects payment increase of $14 million, or 1.9 percent.
• No changes to facility-level adjustment.
• Continues phasing out of rural adjustment.
• Final rule adopts three quality measures on resource use for fiscal year 2018: Medicare spending per beneficiary, discharge to community, and potentially preventable 30-day post-discharge readmission.
• Adopts new quality measure on medication reconciliation for fiscal year 2020 titled “Drug Regimen Review Conducted with Follow-Up for Identified Issues."
• Public reporting of IRF data will begin in fall 2016.