When Congress passed a budget bill last fall calling for the introduction of site-neutral payments for Medicare-covered outpatient services, hospitals wondered how this might affect their current provider-based outpatient facilities and their plans for future facilities or acquisitions.

Now they have some answers.

Last week the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services put regulatory flesh on the bones outlined by Congress in a 764-page proposed regulation that addresses what hospital-based outpatient facilities and services will be covered by the site-neutral payment rule and which will not.

Interested parties have until September 6 to submit formal comments to CMS about the proposed regulation; NAUH currently plans to do so.

Learn more about the proposed guidelines, which are subject to stakeholder review and comment, in this CMS fact sheet and the proposed regulation itself.