AHA to CMS: Proposed FY 2024 LTCH payment reductions would harm patients

AHA today urged the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to make significant revisions to some of its proposed fiscal year 2024 policies for long-term care hospitals, saying the proposed payment reductions would harm “one of Medicare’s most severely ill patient populations and the entire health care field.” 
  
“Most imperative to address is the proposed fixed-loss threshold for [high-cost outlier] payments, which CMS proposes to increase by 150% compared to FY 2023,” AHA wrote. “However, we urge CMS to adopt methodological changes that would result in a lower, and more appropriate, threshold. In addition, we are deeply concerned about the inadequacy of the proposed market basket update given the changing health care system dynamics and its workforce challenges. As such, we strongly urge CMS to utilize its authority to provide a market basket adjustment to account for what the agency missed in the FY 2022 market basket forecast.”

The association submitted separate comments on the agency’s proposed changes to the inpatient PPS.