CMS releases FY 2018 inpatient PPS final rule

Editor's Note

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on August 2 issued the FY 2018 Medicare Inpatient Prospective Payment System final rule, which updates Medicare payment and policies when patients are discharged from hospitals.

The rule increases rates by 1.2%. This includes an initial market-basket update of 2.7% for hospitals that were meaningful users of electronic health records in FY 2016 and that submitted data on quality measures, less a productivity cut of 0.6%, and an additional market-basket cut of 0.75% as mandated by the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

CMS also finalized an increase of 0.4588% to partially restore cuts made by the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 as well as a cut of 0.6% to remove adjustments made to restore the unlawfully instituted two-midnight policy cuts.

In addition, the rule includes ACA-mandated Medicare Disproportionate Share Hospital adjustments, which increase the amount of uncompensated care payments made to acute care hospitals by $800 million. Because of payment rate increases and the other adjustments, acute care hospitals stand to see a total increase in Medicare spending on inpatient payments of $2.4 billion in FY 2018.

Date 2017-08-02 Title Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 Medicare Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) and Long Term Acute Care Hospital (LTCH) Prospective Payment System Final Rule (CMS-1677-F) Contact [email protected] Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 Medicare Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) and Long Term Acute Care Hospital (LTCH) Prospective Payment System Final Rule CMS-1677-F) On August 2, 2017, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a final rule that updates Medicare payment and polices when patients are discharged from hospitals from October 1, 2017, to September 30, 2018.