The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has announced that hospitals must provide patients with new versions of certain beneficiary notices by April 27.
Specifically, new versions of the following notices have been updated to add revised, standardized, and nondiscriminatory language:
- Important Message from Medicare (IM)
- Detailed Notice of Discharge (DND)
- Medicare Outpatient Observation Notice (MOON)
Hospitals are required to deliver the IM, which informs about discharge appeal rights, to all inpatient Medicare beneficiaries.
A DND is provided only if a beneficiary requests an appeal and explains the specific reasons for the discharge.
Hospitals are required to provide a MOON to certain Medicare beneficiaries, informing them that they are outpatients receiving observation services and are not inpatients of a hospital or critical access hospital.