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Key takeaways from five final and two proposed rules from CMS CMS adopted five final Medicare Prospective Payment System rules for FFY 2022 and proposed two rules for calendar year 2022. DataGen has interpreted and analyzed each of the final and proposed rules to help you gauge how these changes may impact your organization.   These rules include regular updates to the wage index and other significant items listed below. The Inpatient PPS final rule includes the following proposals: rebasing and revising the IPPS marketbasket and the Capital Input Price Index from FFY 2014 cost report data to FFY 2018 data; rate increase (+0.5%) for the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 coding offset adjustment; nonstandard adjustments to hospital wage indexes (for eligible hospitals) including bottom quartile adjustments, a 5% wage index “stop-loss” and the reintroduction of an imputed floor policy as mandated by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021; updates to Medicare...

The new Radiation Oncology alternative payment model will start Jan. 1, 2022, after the proposal is finalized in the calendar year 2022 Outpatient Prospective Payment System and Ambulatory Surgical Center Payment System final rule, scheduled for early November. This rule will require prospective hospital outpatient departments, physician practices and freestanding clinics providing radiation therapy services to adopt a prospective bundled payment model with new clinical and quality measure reporting requirements. The model is mandatory for participants selected by CMS. The new RO model includes several notable changes that must be addressed for successful participation: Disease sites update The criteria for cancer types have been clarified. Cancer types must be: commonly treated with radiation therapy according to nationally recognized evidence-based guidelines; associated with ICD-10 codes that demonstrate pricing stability; and not determined to be unsuitable for inclusion by the H...