Congress urged to update post-acute payment plan in COVID-19 relief package

The AHA today urged Congress to revise the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014 in the next COVID-19 relief package to reflect new insights from the COVID-19 pandemic and the effect of recent post-acute care payment system reforms.

The COVID-19 pandemic “has highlighted the uneven patient care abilities” across post-acute care settings and “whether a single payment system can accurately and reliably pay for the full range of post-acute care patients and services,” AHA said in a letter to the Senate.

The association said the legislative “reset” should include a report on the relative strengths and needed improvements for each post-acute setting as they pertain to COVID-19 and future pandemics; an evaluation of the accuracy and reliability of the mandated payment model relative to medically complex patients; and require the new payment model to incorporate the most recent data.

AHA also released a fact sheet supporting the need for the legislative reset.