CMS Releases Proposed Rule for Inpatient Psychiatric Facility PPS for FY 2019

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services today issued a proposed rule to update the payment rates for inpatient psychiatric facilities for fiscal year 2019. CMS proposes a net payment increase of 0.98% or $50 million, compared to FY 2018. This includes a 2.8% market-basket update, offset by cuts of 0.8% for productivity and a further Affordable Care Act-mandated cut of 0.75%, as well as a decrease of 0.27% due to updating the for high-cost outlier threshold. CMS also proposes to remove eight measures from the IPF Quality Reporting program, which the agency estimates would result in a reduction in costs of $68.1 million. In addition, as with the other fiscal year payment rules released this week, CMS includes a Request for Information to obtain feedback on solutions to achieve better interoperability between providers.