This is a confusing time in the public health emergency. Americans are thinking less about COVID-19 on a daily basis and many are eager to move on. But COVID-19 hasn’t gone away, as evidenced by quick spread of the new variant, and it will continue to be part of our lives for the foreseeable future.
We are pleased that CMS will provide hospitals and health systems with increased inpatient payments next year, rather than a cut as proposed, allowing them to better provide care for their patients and communities. As we urged, CMS will use more recent data to calculate the market basket and disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments, which yields far more accurate figures that better reflect the historic inflation and tremendous labor and supply cost pressures hospitals and health systems face.
Thousands of registered nurses and other health care workers at Sacramento-based Sutter Health blasted their employer over payroll errors that they say have shorted them on wages for more than a month.
On August 1, CMS issued its fiscal year (FY) 2023 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) final rule, applying to discharges occurring on or after October 1, 2022. In the accompanying announcement, CMS said that the FY 2023 IPPS “updates Medicare payments and policies for hospitals, drives high-quality, person-centered care, and promotes fiscal stewardship of the Medicare program.” They added that the rule also finalizes new measures encouraging hospitals to build health equity.
