The CMS released the Calendar Year (CY) 2022 Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) and Ambulatory Surgical Center (ASC) Payment System Final Rule on November 2, 2021. In a related Fact Sheet (link), they note that this Final Rule “includes policies that align with several key goals of the Administration, including addressing the health equity gap, fighting the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE), encouraging transparency in the health system, and promoting safe, effective, and patient-centered care.”
CMS estimates “that the OPPS expenditures, including beneficiary cost-sharing, for CY 2022 would be approximately $82.1 billion, which is approximately $5.9 billion higher than estimated OPPS expenditures in CY 2021.”
Changes to the Ambulatory Surgical Center (ASC) Covered Procedure List (CPL)
In the CY 2022 OPPS Proposed Rule, CMS also did an about face for the ASC CPL. Of the 267 procedures added to the list in CY 2021, CMS proposed to remove 258 procedures as they do not believe they meet the proposed revisions to the CY 2022 ASC CPL criteria.
CMS noted in the Proposed Rule, “Based on our internal review of preliminary claims submitted to Medicare, we do not believe that ASCs have been furnishing the majority of the 267 procedures finalized in 2021. Because of this, we believe it is unlikely that ASCs have made practice changes in reliance on the policy we adopted in CY 2021. Therefore, we do not anticipate that ASCs would be significantly affected by the removal of these 258 procedures from the ASC CPL.”
After reviewing recommendations made by commentors, CMS finalized the removal of 255 of the 258 codes proposed from the ASC CPL. Table 62 in the Final Rule includes the complete list of 255 procedures.
Revisions to the CY 2022 ASC CPL Criteria
In CY 2021, CMS revised their policy for adding surgical procedures to the ASC CPL. For CY 2022, they have finalized their proposal to revise the requirements for covered surgical procedures to reinstate the general standards and exclusion criteria established prior to CY 2021.
Inpatient, outpatient or ASC, documentation is crucial to accurately reflect the complexity of the patient, support the medical necessity for services provided and support the setting in which services are performed.
Hospital Price Transparency Increase in Civil Monetary Penalties
CMS noted in the Proposed Rule from initial months of experience with enforcing the hospital price transparency requirements that they expressed “concern by what appears to be a trend towards a high rate of hospital noncompliance identified by CMS through sampling and reviews to date.” One approach to address this trend was their proposal to impose potentially higher penalties and “to scale the CMP to ensure the penalty amount would be more relevant to the characteristics of the noncompliant hospital.”
CMS agrees with commenters in the Final Rule “that application of a scaling approach using bed count would be an effective way to ensure compliance, consistency and fairness in application of penalties across noncompliant hospitals” and finalized their proposal as follows:
- Hospitals with a bed count ≤ 30 will have a minimum Civil Monetary Penalty (CMP) of $300 per day or $109,500 for a full CY of noncompliance,
- Hospitals with at least thirty-one beds up to and including 550 beds will have a penalty of $10 per bed per day or a range from $113,150 to $2,007,500 penalty for a full CY of noncompliance depending on bed size, and
- Hospitals with greater than 550 beds will have a daily dollar penalty of $5,500 or $2,007,500 for a full CY of noncompliance.
Learn about changes to the Inpatient Only (IPO) by clicking here.
Resource
CY 2022 OPPS Final Rule CMS Press Release: https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/cms-oppsasc-final-rule-increases-price-transparency-patient-safety-and-access-quality-care
