Ways and Means members introduce hospital payment reform bills

Republican leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee yesterday introduced legislation that would create a common Medicare payment classification system for inpatient and outpatient surgical services and change how Medicare reimburses teaching hospitals and Disproportionate Share Hospitals. H.R. 3291 would require the Health and Human Services Secretary to create by 2018 a Healthcare Common Procedure Classification System for at least 10 surgical Medicare Severity Diagnosis-Related Groups, which would serve as a guide to connect inpatient and outpatient coding and payment systems for hospitals. H.R. 3288 would instruct the secretary to cap “empirically justified DSH” funding at the estimated current level of $3.3 billion for fiscal year 2017 and subsequent years and increase DSH funding to hospitals in states that have not expanded Medicaid to low-income adults under the Affordable Care Act. H.R. 3292 would instruct the secretary to reimburse indirect medical education costs through lump-sum payments rather than for each discharge beginning with cost reporting periods ending during or after FY 2019.