On April 14, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released its hospital inpatient prospective payment system (HIPPS) proposed rule for fiscal year 2009. Overall, the proposed rule is estimated to increase Medicare payments to acute care hospitals by nearly $4.0 billion. In the rule, CMS announced a mandated market-basket update of 3.0% for hospitals that report data for 30 selected quality measures. Hospitals not submitting data would receive a 1.0% update. The rule proposes to expand the number of required quality measures to 73 in FY 2010. CMS also proposes several changes to the method used to compute the hospital wage index.

As part of the Hospital-Acquired Conditions provisions, CMS is also proposing to add an additional nine conditions that need to be reported if present when a patient is first admitted.

In addition, the proposed rule would expand the post-acute care transfer policy as it relates to transfers to home. The proposed policy would expand the period in which home health services can be provided from within three to within seven days of discharge. Comments on the proposed rule will be accepted until June 13.

Press Release: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/apps/media/press_releases.asp 3 Quality Fact Sheets and Exec Summary Fact Sheet 4/14/08-: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/apps/media/fact_sheets.asp.

The proposed rule is posted at: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/AcuteInpatientPPS/IPPS/list.asp?listpage=4.