CMS released the Calendar Year 2017 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System and Ambulatory Surgical Center Payment System proposed changes.
The changes include updates to quality provisions, policies and payment rates.
Here are five things to know about changes to the ASC quality reporting program:
1. CMS is planning to add seven measures to the quality reporting program set for payment determination in CY 2020 and the following years.
2. The seven measures are:
• ASC-13: Normothermia Outcome — this assesses the percentage of patients having surgical procedures under general or neuraxial anesthesia for 60 minutes or more who are normothermic within 15 minutes of arrival in the post-anesthesia care unit.
• ASC-14: Unplanned Anterior Vitrectomy — this assesses the percentage of cataract surgery patients who have an unplanned anterior vitrectomy.
• ASC-15(a-e) — This includes five measures that are collected using the Outpatient and Ambulatory Surgical Center Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey, which is a patient experience survey.
3. CMS is not proposing any changes to the quality reporting measure sets for CY 2018 and CY 2019.
4. Beginning with the CY 2019 payment determination, CMS is planning to update the extraordinary circumstances exemptions policy. The agency proposes extending the ECE request deadline from within 45 days to within 90 days from the date that the circumstance occurred.
5. CMS is also planning to implement a deadline (May 15 of each year) for all data submitted via a CMS web-based tool in the ASC quality reporting program, starting with the payment determination in CY 2019.
CMS will be accepting comments on the proposed rule until Sept. 6, 2016.
