CMS has issued its Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility Prospective Payment System proposed rule, which would increase payments to inpatient rehab facilities by 3.7 percent in 2024.
Four details:
1. The 3.7 percent pay bump includes a 3.2 percent market basket update, which is reduced by a 0.2 percent productivity adjustment and increased by an estimated 0.7 percent adjustment for outlier payments. CMS projects that total payments will increase by $335 million in 2024.
2. The agency also proposed to rebase the inpatient rehab facility market basket using 2021 data — something CMS does every four years or so to reflect more recent data on cost structures. It last rebased the inpatient rehab facility market basket in its 2020 final rule, where CMS adopted a 2016-based market basket.
3. CMS also proposed modifying its regulations to eliminate the requirement that new inpatient rehab facilities at hospitals open at the beginning of cost-report periods. Instead, the proposed change would allow opening at any time, provided that the hospital gives 30-day notice to the proper entities.
4. CMS proposed to adopt a modified version of a quality measure evaluating vaccination against COVID among healthcare workers and a new discharge function for 2025. The agency would remove three measures from the inpatient rehab facility quality reporting program: the application of functional assessment/care plan measure; the change in self-care score for medical rehab patients; and the change in mobility score for medical rehab patients measure.
Click here for more details on the proposed rule.