Medicare would change its wage index system, raise inpatient fees, increase funding for Medicare disproportionate share hospital payments (Medicare DSH), enhance payments for new technologies, and make minor modifications in its hospital readmissions reduction, value-based purchasing, and hospital-acquired condition program if a proposed regulation published this week is ultimately adopted.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has published its proposed FY 2020 Medicare inpatient prospective payment system regulation:  its plan for paying acute-care hospitals for Medicare-covered inpatient services in FY 2020.  The 1800-page regulation calls for major changes in Medicare’s wage index system – changes CMS says would “…address the disparities between high and low wage index hospitals…”  It would do so by increasing the wage indexes of many rural hospitals, regardless of their actual wage costs, and pay for those increases by reducing the wage indexes of high-index hospitals, again regardless of their actual wage costs.

The proposed regulation also would raise inpatient payments to hospitals 3.2 percent in the coming year.  In addition, it would add $216 million to its pool of money for Medicare DSH uncompensated care payments – an increase necessitated by this year’s increase in the number of uninsured Americans – while modifying the methodology for calculating those payments.

Learn more about what CMS proposes for Medicare inpatient payments in the coming year by reviewing the proposed regulation itself or reading the fact sheet CMS published to outline the regulation’s highlights.

Stakeholder comments are invited and due to CMS by June 24; NASH expects to take advantage of this opportunity to convey its concerns about selected aspects of the proposed regulation.