Medicare inpatient rates will increase 1.4 percent in FY 2015.

But the already-shrinking Medicare disproportionate share (Medicare DSH) pool will be $900 million smaller than proposed in April.

These and other payment policies were included in the recently unveiled Medicare inpatient prospective payment system regulation for FY 2015.

The new regulation, to be published shortly in the Federal Register, also addresses changes in Medicare’s value-based purchasing program, hospital readmissions reduction program, and outlier threshold and introduces Medicare’s new hospital-acquired conditions program and changes in hospitals’ Medicare area wage indexes.

The National Association of Urban Hospitals (NAUH) has prepared a summary of the new regulation tailored to the interests of private safety-net hospitals and can provide projections detailing the anticipated impact of all of these changes on individual private safety-net hospitals.  To receive a copy of this memo, hit the “contact us” link in the upper right-hand portion of this screen.  To see the regulation itself go here and for a Reuters report on the regulation go here.