The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has proposed rules calling for modest increases in payments for rehabilitation facilities and skilled nursing facilities, as well as a huge boost in awards for reporting Medicare fraud.
CMS is suggesting a 2 percent increase for inpatient rehab facilities in fiscal 2014, which would increase overall payments by $150 million. For skilled nursing facilities, the payment bump would total 1.4 percent, or $500 million per year, according to the proposed rules.
In both cases, CMS is factoring in market basket price increases of 2.5 percent for inpatient rehab and 2.3 percent for skilled nursing facilities, along with productivity adjustments of 0.4 percent apiece.
For inpatient rehabilitation, CMS also is calling for an 0.2 percent increase due to proposed outlier payment changes, as well as scrutiny of each facility's cases to determine whether at least 60 percent of them fall within 13 qualifying medical conditions, according to AHA News Now.
Meanwhile, Medicare is dramatically upping the ante on Medicare fraud, increasing the reward for tips leading to the recovery of fraudulently obtained benefits to $9.9 million--up from just $1,000 today, FierceHealthcare previously reported.
- read the AHA News Now briefs on IRF and SNF payments
- here's the proposed IRF rule (.pdf)
- check out the proposed SNF rule (.pdf)