Yesterday, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission released draft recommendations to Congress, including a proposed 1 percent increase to inpatient and outpatient hospital payments in fiscal year 2014, according to an AHA News Now report.
MedPAC's proposed 1 percent increase is below the update in current Medicare law, but it is the same as what they proposed for FY 2013 last December. Ultimately, in August, CMS decided to increase Medicare payments to hospitals by 2.8 percent for FY 2013.
Included in MedPAC's recommendations was a 0.8 percent documentation and coding cut for inpatient services, which the American Hospital Association criticized.
"We fundamentally disagree with the assertion that hospitals have continued to benefit from documentation and coding cuts years after the switch to MS-DRGs," said Caroline Steinberg, AHA vice president of trends analysis, in the report. "There are real increases in patient severity linked to trends in obesity, growing shares of patients with multiple chronic diseases and more patients dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. These trends need to be recognized in reimbursements. Plain and simple: Today's hospital patients are sicker."
MedPAC also noted that hospital Medicare margins fell across the board in 2011: negative 5.8 percent for overall Medicare services, negative 4 percent for Medicare inpatient services and negative 11 percent for Medicare outpatient services.
MedPAC will vote on the recommendations in January, and they can be revised until then.
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