2016 Hospital IPPS For Acute Care Hospitals0

2016 Hospital IPPS For Acute Care Hospitals

iStock_000023989921LargeThis e-bulletin from the Health Law Committee of the Business Law Section for the State Bar of California, published on April 20, 2015, summarizes recent proposed regulations by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (“CMS”) for the Fiscal Year (“FY”) 2016 Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems (“IPPS”) for Acute Care Hospitals.

Every spring CMS issues its proposed regulations to modify the inpatient prospective payment systems for acute care hospitals, as well as other facilities. Sometime in August CMS issues its final regulations in anticipation of the new fiscal year starting October 1. This year like all others, the 1,526 pages of regulatory guidance (reduced to approximately 800 triple-columned-pages in the Federal Register on April 30, 2015) provide hospitals with the most important revenue information for the year, especially as these institutions try to navigate through the current climate of health care reform.

The proposed regulations cover the gamut of Medicare reimbursement concerns, including the types of hospitals that must adhere to the 2016 changes as well as what’s new with the already established Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (“VBP”) Program, the Hospital-Acquired Condition (“HAC”) Program, the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (“HRRP”) and disproportionate share hospital payments. One new additions to CMS’ annual encyclopedia of regulatory modifications includes a recoupment adjustment to account for changes in Medicare-severity diagnosis-related group (“MS-DRG”) documentation and coding that do not reflect real changes in case-mixing, totaling $11 billion over the next four years.

As the Medicare program continues to swell in ranks and hospitals become more dependent on revenue therefrom, just about any of the 382,000 words in the proposed regulations may hold the key to unlocking the mystery behind Medicare in 2016. For more information, the proposed regulation can be found here.