CMS Issues Draft Rule on Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program
CMS on Friday issued a proposed rule for a hospital value-based purchasing program for Medicare that would reward facilities that provide high quality patient care, Modern Healthcare reports.
Details, Time Frame
The program -- which is required under the federal health reform law -- would take effect in fiscal year 2013 and apply to payments for discharges occurring on or after Oct. 1, 2012. The payments would be based on whether acute care hospitals meet certain care quality and patient satisfaction metrics, or how much hospitals' performance improves across a set time frame.
CMS proposed using 17 clinical process-of-care measures and eight Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey measures to gauge patients' care experience.
CMS said the program will reward better-performing hospitals with commensurately higher incentive payments (Zigmond, Modern Healthcare, 1/7).
CMS says it will accept public comments on the draft rule until March 8 and issue a final rule in 2012 (Pecquet, "Healthwatch," The Hill, 1/7).
Berwick Weighs In
CMS Administrator Donald Berwick said, "The hospital value-based purchasing program proposal expands upon CMS' long-standing pay-for-reporting program to reward hospitals not just for reporting data, but for the results of that data" (Modern Healthcare, 1/7).
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