The policy pleased some providers by eliminating a controversial 25% policy for long-term care hospitals.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalized a collection of payment rules Thursday for fiscal year 2019, including several policy changes related to the Trump administration's regulatory-reduction efforts.
The final Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) and Long-Term Care Hospital (LTCH) Prospective Payment System rule offers an average payment increase of 3% to acute care hospitals, and it updates the federal payment rate by 1.35% for LTCH recipients, according to the CMS announcement.
"There are a number of policies CMS finalized today that will reduce regulatory burden and help ensure America's hospitals and health systems can continue to provide high-quality, efficient care for the patients and communities they serve," American Hospital Association Executive Vice President Tom Nickels said in a statement Thursday.
The final rules officially eliminate a policy that had reduced reimbursement for long-term care hospitals in which more than 25% of the patient population came from a single general acute care hospital. Nickels said the AHA welcomes the move but opposes the reduction in payments made to offset the change.
The final rules also eliminate certain reporting requirements deemed to be unnecessary, keeping with the administration's deregulatory push.
"We’ve listened to patients and their doctors who urged us to remove the obstacles getting in the way of quality care and positive health outcomes," CMS Administrator Seema Verma said.
While commending CMS for removing the lower-value quality measures, Premier Senior Vice President of Public Affairs Blair Childs said his organization is "very disappointed" that CMS dropped its plan to do away with redundant penalties for hospital-acquired conditions (HAC).
"We have long felt that all of the five hospital quality and payment programs overseen by CMS need to be mutually exclusive to ensure that hospitals are not inappropriately hit with double or triple penalties for the same event," Childs said in a statement.
"In leaving the HAC penalties the same, CMS missed an opportunity to harmonize measurement around indicators that truly matter, and avoid duplication across programs."
A fact sheet about the final rules is available on the CMS website.
Steven Porter is an associate content manager and Strategy editor for HealthLeaders, a Simplify Compliance brand.