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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued the federal fiscal year (FFY) 2022 inpatient psychiatric facility (IPF) prospective payment system (PPS) final rule updating payment policies and rates. The final rule is effective Oct. 1.
CMS finalizes an annual payment update of 2% that includes a market-basket update of 2.7%, with a 0.7 percentage point productivity adjustment. These payment adjustments, in addition to other changes in the rule, are estimated to result in an overall increase of 2.1% for IPF payments, or approximately $80 million compared to FFY 2021.
Additional key provisions include:
- Updates to IPF Teaching Policy: CMS adopts changes to its IPF PPS teaching policy to account for displaced residents from the closure of IPF hospitals and teaching programs. This will align with policies previously finalized in the FFY 2021 inpatient prospective payment system final rule.
- COVID-19 Vaccination Coverage Among Healthcare Personnel (HCP) Measure: CMS finalizes the adoption of a new measure that requires IPFs to report COVID-19 HCP vaccinations in their facilities beginning with the FFY 2023 IPF quality reporting program (QRP).
- Follow-up After Psychiatric Hospitalization Measure: Beginning with FFY 2024, CMS finalizes the adoption of the claims-based Follow-up After Psychiatric Hospitalization measure that expands on and replaces the current Follow-up After Hospitalization for Mental Illness measure. The new measure includes patients with substance use disorder and expands the provider types that can provide follow-up care to include primary care providers.
- Removal of IPF QRP Measures: CMS finalizes the removal of the Timely Transmission of Transition Record (Discharges from an Inpatient Facility to Home/Self Care or any Other Site of Care) measure from the IPF QRP for the FFY 2024 payment determination. CMS did not finalize proposals to remove the Alcohol Use Brief Intervention Provided or Offered and Alcohol Use Brief Intervention or the Tobacco Use Treatment Provided or Offered and Tobacco Use Treatment measures.
- Transition to Patient-Level Reporting for Chart-Abstracted Measures: CMS finalizes the proposal to transition to patient-level reporting for chart-abstracted measures beginning with voluntary reporting of data for the FFY 2023 payment determination and transitioning to required patient-level reporting for the FFY 2024 payment determination and subsequent years.
- RFI on Closing the Health Equity Gap: The proposed rule solicited feedback on ways to improve health equity for all patients. The comments CMS received will be taken into consideration as the agency works to develop policies to improve health equity. CMS plans to provide additional stratified quality measure information to providers related to race and ethnicity.
Additional information is available in a CMS fact sheet.
