The Ambulatory Surgery Center Association has highlighted three key points about the recently released 2012 proposed payment rule for ambulatory surgery centers and hospital outpatient departments in its ASCA Government Affairs Update.
They are as follows:
- Continued use of CPI-U to update ASC payments. CMS continues to propose using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) to update ASC rates to account for inflation, while proposing to use the typically higher hospital market basket measure to update HOPD rates. This, coupled with CMS providing a conservative estimate of what the change in CPI-U will be for 2012 and CMS measuring the healthcare reform law's mandated productivity adjustment differently for ASCs and HOPDs, would lead to HOPDs receiving a 1.5 percent across-the-board increase for 2012 while ASCs would receive 0.9 percent.
- No new Medicare procedures added for ASCs. CMS has proposed to add no new Medicare-approved procedures to the ASC list of payable procedures for 2012 while proposing the addition of three procedures which were previously on the inpatient-only list to the HOPD list.
- ASCs that fail to report quality measures could start facing payment reductions in 2014. Beginning in 2014, CMS is proposing to reduce payments for ASCs that do not report quality data. Many important details concerning the reporting of ASC quality data remain unclear.
Learn more about the 2012 Medicare payment proposal on the website of the ASC Association.
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