Last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released the final rule for the Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) and Long-term Care Hospital payments (LTCH-PPS) for fiscal year 2025. Effective October 1, 2024, the IPPS rates will increase by 2.9% for hospitals that successfully report quality measures and are meaningful electronic health record users. CMS finalized policies to extend the low wage index adjustment; provide a separate payment to small, independent IPPS hospitals to establish and maintain a buffer stock of essential medicines for use during future shortages; distribute an additional 200 Medicare-funded residency payment slots to train physicians as required by statute; adjust hospital payments when patients have inadequate housing and housing instability; and extend certain COVID-19 and influenza data reporting requirements for hospitals and Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs). They did not finalize a proposal to define ‘new’ in the context of residency training programs.
In this rule, CMS also finalized a new, mandatory Innovation Center episode-based payment model entitled Transforming Episode Accountability Model (TEAM). For this model, acute care hospitals in select geographic areas will be accountable for ensuring that Medicare beneficiaries receive coordinated, high-quality care during and after five surgical procedures: coronary artery bypass graft (CABG), lower extremity joint replacement (LEJR), major bowel procedure, surgical hip/femur fracture treatment (SHFFT), and spinal fusion. Additionally, within TEAM, CMS finalized a voluntary Decarbonization and Resilience Initiative, in which participants will collect and share greenhouse gas emissions data with CMS and CMS will provide technical assistance to enhance climate sustainability for their organizations.