Medicare and Medicaid Programs: Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment and Ambulatory Surgical Center Payment Systems and Quality Reporting Programs; Physician-Owned Hospitals: Data Sources for Expansion Exception; Physician Certification of Inpatient Hospital Services; Medicare Advantage Organizations and Part D Sponsors: Appeals Process for Overpayments Associated with Submitted Data;
This proposed rule would revise the Medicare hospital outpatient prospective payment system (OPPS) and the Medicare ambulatory surgical center (ASC) payment system for CY 2015 to implement applicable statutory requirements and changes arising from our continuing experience with these systems. In this proposed rule, we describe the proposed changes to the amounts and factors used to determine the payment rates for Medicare services paid under the OPPS and those paid under the ASC payment system. In addition, this proposed rule would update and refine the requirements for the Hospital Outpatient Quality Reporting (OQR) Program and the ASC Quality Reporting (ASCQR) Program.
In this document, we also are proposing changes to the data sources used for expansion requests for physician owned hospitals under the physician self-referral regulations; changes to the physician certification requirements for hospital inpatient admissions to make the existing certification of the reason for hospitalization, the estimated time the patient will need to remain in the hospital, and the plan of posthospital care (if applicable), only applicable to long-stay cases and outlier cases; and changes to establish a three-level appeals process for Medicare Advantage (MA) organizations and Part D sponsors that would be applicable to CMS-identified overpayments associated with data submitted by these organizations and sponsors.