AHA to Congress: Urge CMS to fix inadequate inpatient payment proposal

AHA today called on Congress to urge the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to make two critical changes to the hospital inpatient prospective payment system proposed rule for fiscal year 2023 to more accurately reflect the cost of providing hospital care to patients and communities. Specifically, AHA said CMS should retrospectively adjust the market basket update for FY 2022 to account for unprecedented inflation and eliminate the productivity cut for FY 2023.

“Since the market basket and associated productivity update use historical data to forecast into the future, the current rising inflation and massive growth in expenses facing hospitals and health systems were not adequately considered in the estimates,” AHA said in a letter to members of the House and Senate.