The CMS is moving forward with a payment increase to skilled-nursing facilities, inpatient rehabilitation facilities and hospice care that also sets new quality measures.
In a final rule, the agency is more than doubling the increase skilled-nursing facilities received last year, which would amount to an $920 million bump. Last year, they received only a 1.2% Medicare rate increase, leading to $430 million in higher payments over the prior year.
Medicare would also pay out $145 million more a year to rehabilitation facilities, but those facilities would face about $5.2 million in costs related to new quality-reporting requirements.
The CMS wants to boost Medicare payment rates to hospices by 2.1% next year and introduce two new quality measures. Hospices would receive another $350 million, compared to 2016. It's a significantly higher increase than the 1.1% bump received this year. The CMS also said it expects to begin publicly reporting on quality measures and other hospice data by the middle of next year.
The agency also finalized a skilled-nursing value-based program that will begin in 2019.
In these final rules, the agency said it would use measures that assess the rate at which SNF patients are readmitted within 30 days of being discharged from a facility paid under the inpatient prospective payment system, a critical-access hospital or a psychiatric hospital.