The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission met on January 16 and 17 to consider and vote on its recommendations to Congress for 2015 payment rate changes and other reforms. Annually, MedPAC issues its “March Report” to Congress setting out a wide range of recommendation predominately focused on payment rates for all Medicare provider sectors. In addition, these reports often present recommendations on broader system reforms.
This year the Commission decided to maintain last year’s home health recommendations on payment related matters and to add a new one on penalties for providers that show a high degree of avoidable readmissions to hospitals. The left-over payment recommendations include:
- A zero inflation update (Market Basket Index/MBI)
- Accelerate rate rebasing from a 4 year phase-in to a shorter period, e.g. 2 years
- Reduce reimbursement for therapy episodes
- Institute a copay for patients that are not admitted from inpatient care
- Expand fraud and abuse efforts to address regions with aberrant patterns of utilization