On April 20, 2015, CMS issued a proposed rule outlining FY 2016 Medicare payment rates for skilled nursing facilities (SNFs). The rule would:
- Increase overall payments to SNFs by $500 million or 1.4%, compared to FY 2015 levels
- Implement a provision of the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014 (IMPACT Act) that reduces by 2% the annual payment update to SNFs that fail to submit required quality data under the SNF Quality Reporting Program (QRP) beginning in FY 2018. CMS proposes to adopt three QRP measures for FY 2018 that address three quality domains identified in the IMPACT Act and that comply with the IMPACT Act requirement of standardized post-acute care data reporting across home health agencies, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, long term care hospitals and SNFs. CMS intends to propose additional quality measures and resource use measures in future rulemaking
- Establish a 30-day all-cause, all-condition hospital readmission quality measure that will be used in a new SNF Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) Program beginning in FY 2019, as required by the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014 (PAMA). CMS seeks comment on numerous issues associated with the SNF VBP Program, which will be addressed in FY 2017 SNF Prospective Payment System (PPS) rulemaking
- Establish new regulatory reporting requirements for SNFs and nursing facilities to electronically submit staffing information based on payroll data, as mandated by the Affordable Care Act (ACA)
Public comments on the proposed rule will be accepted until June 15. For further information, visit the Medicare SNF PPS homepage.
