MedPAC may ask Congress to accelerate common PAC PPS

In an effort to lower overall Medicare payments for post-acute care and increase payment accuracy, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission yesterday considered a draft recommendation for Congress to implement in a non-budget neutral manner a common prospective payment system for post-acute care providers by 2021, which would accelerate the current timeline by more than three years and provide a three-year transition period that health care providers could bypass. The Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014 calls for Medicare to develop a common PPS that could replace the separate payment systems for home health, skilled nursing facilities, inpatient rehabilitation facilities and long-term care hospitals, but does not authorize its implementation. Under the Act’s current development timeline for a PAC PPS, MedPAC estimates the earliest the new system could be proposed by Congress is 2024. The commission presented a prototype PAC PPS system to Congress in June 2016, which the IMPACT Act calls for the Department of Health and Human Services to further develop through 2022. The commission is expected to vote on the draft recommendation in April. If approved, the recommendation would be included in MedPAC’s June report to Congress.