Valued Voice

CMS Releases Proposed 2025 Inpatient Payment Rule

• A 2.6% payment update including a hospital market basket increase of 3.0% offset by a productivity cut of 0.4%.
• Extend a policy to help low-wage index hospitals for at least three more years in an ongoing effort to address wage index disparities.
• Establish a new mandatory CMS Innovation Center model that would provide bundled payment for certain surgical procedures.
• Distribute new graduate medical education slots under section 4122 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023.
• Seek public comments on the use of Medicare IPPS payments for maternity care by other payers.
• Address drug supply chain disruptions, CMS proposes a separate IPPS payment to help small, independent hospitals maintain a buffer of essential drugs.
• Redesignate several ICD-10 codes related to housing status in keeping with its work on identifying social determinants of health.
• Updates across hospital quality programs, including replacing the COVID-19 and seasonal influenza reporting standards for hospitals and critical access hospitals (CAHs) with a standard addressing acute respiratory illnesses to include RSV:
  • Beginning on Oct 1, CMS would require hospitals and CAHs to report data once per week on confirmed infections of COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syntactical virus among hospitalized patients, hospital capacity and limited patient demographic information, including age.