The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released a notice updating the Medicare fee-for-service payment rates for inpatient psychiatric facilities (IPFs) for fiscal year (FY) 2018.
Excluding budget-neutrality adjustments, payments to IPFs will increase by a net 1 percent. This figure is based on a 2.6 percent market basket update offset by cuts of 0.6 percent for productivity and 0.75 percent mandated by the Affordable Care Act, plus a decrease of 0.26 percent for high-cost outlier cases.
In the FY 2016 IPF prospective payment system final rule, the CMS implemented a policy to gradually phase out the rural adjustment for the IPFs over three years. The affected IPFs received two-thirds of the rural adjustment in FY 2016, one-third of the rural adjustment for FY 2017, and will not receive an adjustment in FY 2018.
The updates will take effect Oct. 1. Over the next several weeks, SDAHO will provide further information, including facility-specific impact analyses.
