Nearly half of the members of the Senate have written to CMS asking the agency to withdraw its proposal to make more Medicare outpatient payments on a site-neutral basis.

In the letter, 48 senators note that in the 2015 Bipartisan Budget Act Congress specifically directed that CMS grandfather certain existing hospital-based off-campus outpatient facilities from CMS efforts to make more outpatient payments on a site-neutral basis.  The proposed regulation, however, would affect those very facilities.

NAUH made much the same point in its September letter to CMS expressing its opposition to this aspect of the agency’s proposed 2019 outpatient prospective payment system regulation.

Go here to see the senators’ letter to CMS.