This post has been archived and contains information that may be out of date.
What’s happening: CHA DataSuite issued a hospital-specific analysis of the Medicare hospital federal fiscal year (FFY) 2025 wage index and occupational mix data.
What else to know: The data analyzed is final and is the third of three wage and occupational mix data public use files (PUFs) that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued to develop the hospital wage index for FFY 2025.
It is important that hospitals review these wage data. Under CMS’ hospital wage index development timetable, hospitals have until May 29 to verify their data and submit correction requests with supporting documentation to both CMS and their Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC) to:
- Correct errors due to CMS or MAC mishandling of the final wage data posted in the April 29 PUF
- Dispute data corrections made by CMS of which the hospital has been notified between March 21 and May 29 that do not arise from a hospital’s request for revisions
Appeals with all supporting documentation for the FFY 2025 wage index cycle must be submitted via the Wage Index Appeals module in the Medicare Electronic Application Request Information System (MEARIS). To ensure compatibility, supporting documentation should be a PDF or Word file and spreadsheets should be in Excel. If a hospital is unable to submit an appeal using MEARIS, it may instead submit by email to wageindexreview@cms.hhs.gov.
Data corrections made by CMS of which the hospital has been notified on or after May 16 may be appealed to the Provider Reimbursement Review Board.
Changes to the data will be limited to situations involving errors by CMS or the MAC that the hospital could not have known about before review of the “final” April PUFs. Data that were incorrect in the preliminary or revised wage index data PUFs, but for which no correction requests were received by the Feb. 14 deadline, will not be changed at this stage for inclusion in the wage index.
This content is restricted to members.
