CMS outlines changes to payment policies

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) filed a lengthy document outlining a number of changes to its payment policies.

Of note, on page 19 of the document, CMS proposes to pay the same amount for the same procedure, regardless of whether the procedure was done in a hospital or in an outpatient setting (the new policy is known as "site neutrality"). Earlier, hospitals had made the case that they should be compensated more because they maintained equipment and access to more intensive care facilities if the need ever arose. Because of this differential, some had accused hospitals of buying up physician practices with the express intention of being able to collect more revenue for the same procedures by labeling the venues as hospitals.

On page 638, the document outlines the continued interest in transparency of pricing information, requiring, for example, hospitals to post their prices online in a machine-readable format (starting at the beginning of 2019).

The comment period goes through September of this year.