The Biden administration has proposed giving rehabilitation facilities a 2.2% payment increase for the 2022 federal fiscal year that starts in October.
The payment rate outlined in a proposed rule released late Thursday is slightly below the 2.4% that CMS gave rehab facilities for the 2021 federal fiscal year. CMS proposed in a separate rule a 2.3% increase for payments to inpatient psychiatric facilities as well.
Both payment rules also give updates on outlier payments, which help facilities deal with the costs of treating extremely costly beneficiaries.
For rehab facilities, CMS proposes to maintain outlier payments to 3% of the total facility payments for fiscal 2022, which begins on Oct. 1.
CMS also aims to keep the outlier payments for psychiatric facilities at 2% for 2022.
A major change for both rules is a new addition aimed to track coverage of COVID-19 vaccinations among healthcare personnel.
CMS also wants to add vaccination coverage among healthcare personnel as a measure to the quality reporting program for psychiatric facilities. The program outlines quality metrics that facilities need to meet.
“This measure would be reported using the COVID-19 modules on the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s] National Healthcare Safety Network web portal,” a fact sheet on the psychiatric payment rule said.
The agency also is proposing a similar measure for rehab facilities to report any vaccinations of healthcare personnel for COVID-19.
“This proposed measure is designed to assess whether [IRFs] are taking steps to limit the spread of COVID-19 among their [healthcare personnel], reduce the risk of transmission within their facilities and help sustain the ability of [rehabilitation facilities] to continue serving their communities through the public health emergency and beyond,” a fact sheet on the rehab rule said.
In the rehab facility rule, CMS also asked for comments on how to improve health equity for all patients.
CMS is seeking comments on whether to add more measures that address patient equity in standardized patient assessment data elements, which must be collected by facilities after post-acute care.
The agency also wants comments on ways to attain health equity for psychiatric facilities as well.
“CMS is committed to addressing the significant and persistent inequities in health outcomes in the United States through improving data collection to better measure and analyze disparities across programs and policies,” the agency said in a fact sheet.
Comments for both rules are due by June 7.