Medicare: The Gift That Keeps On Giving0

This article was first published at Corporate Compliance Insights on September 5, 2014.

iStock_000010996009Small“The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.”  — Dante Alighieri

The end of summer brings with it change across the United States.  Children and many young adults prepare themselves for the new school year, professional baseball players set their sights on what has come to be known as the Fall Classic, and foliage undergoes the first stages of fall’s impending metamorphosis. For America’s health care professionals, August has also become synonymous with the release of the final rule from the Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”), which covers the Medicare Program’s Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems for Acute Care Hospitals (“IPPS”), and sets the rules of the game for those in the field, at least for another year.

Including such updates to the hospital IPPS for operating and capital-related costs as CMS continues to implement the Affordable Care Act, changes relating to graduate medical education (“GME”) and indirect medical education (“IME”) payments, revisions to the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (“VBP”) Program, the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (“HRRP”), and the Hospital-Acquired Condition (“HAC”) Reduction Program, technical corrections to the provider administrative appeals and judicial review process, expanded use of Medicare Advantage (“MA”) risk adjustment data, not to mention the alignment of reporting and submission timelines for quality measures within the Medicare E.H.R. Incentive Program and IQR Program, this is one millenary regulation not to be missed. For those who may shy away from such Federal Register epics, the following is a brief overview of two critical topics. … Read more →