AdvaMed Responds To Proposed FY 2009 Inpatient Hospital Payment Rule

Main Category: Medicare / Medicaid / SCHIP
Article Date: 22 Apr 2008 - 14:00 PDT

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Ann-Marie Lynch, executive vice president for payment and health care delivery policy at the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed), released the following statement regarding the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) proposed FY 2009 inpatient hospital payment rule:

"We are pleased that in FY 2009 CMS will complete the two-year phase-in of the MS-DRG patient classification system. This new system will improve payment accuracy and the two year phase-in will help to avoid excessively abrupt changes in payment.

"The FY 2009 hospital inpatient proposed rule does not provide an immediate adjustment to address the long standing issue of charge compression. Due to lags in the data used to calculate the inpatient payment rates, the proposal to modify the cost reports as put forth in this rule would not result in a change until FY 2012. In order to improve the accuracy of the payment rates before 2012, a regression-based adjustment for supplies should be implemented in FY 2009.

"We look forward to the opportunity to provide CMS more detailed comments on the rule in our formal comment letter."

AdvaMed member companies produce the medical devices, diagnostic products and health information systems that are transforming health care through earlier disease detection, less invasive procedures and more effective treatments. Our members produce nearly 90 percent of the health care technology purchased annually in the United States and more than 50 percent purchased annually around the world. AdvaMed members range from the largest to the smallest medical technology innovators and companies.

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