Commission Recommendations
MedPAC makes recommendations to the Congress and to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on issues affecting the administration of the Medicare program. With its recommendations, the Commission strives to improve the delivery of care, while ensuring financial stability and maximizing value for the program. After extensive analysis and evaluation, our recommendations are discussed and voted on by Commissioners in our public meetings. Recommendations are typically published in two main reports, released in March and June of each year.
| Recommendations | Topic(s) | Date |
|---|---|---|
Assessing payment for outpatient hospital care in rural areasIn the short term, no outpatient payment adjustments for rural hospitals are needed in addition to the current hold-harmless provision. The Secretary should revisit outpatient payments to rural hospitals when better information on hospitals’ experience with the payment system is available. |
|
June 2001 |
Improving payment for inpatient hospital care in rural areas (A)The Congress should require that rural referral centers’ wages exceed the average wage in their area to quality for geographic reclassification, but these facilities should retain their waiver from the proximity rule. |
|
June 2001 |
Improving payment for inpatient hospital care in rural areas (B)The Congress should require the Secretary to develop a graduated adjustment to the rates used in the inpatient prospective payment system for hospitals with low overall volumes of discharges. This adjustment should only apply to hospitals that are more than a specified number of miles from another facility providing inpatient care, with appropriate exceptions for… Read more » |
|
June 2001 |
Improving payment for inpatient hospital care in rural areas (C)In fiscal year 2002, the Secretary should implement fully the policy of excluding from the hospital wage index salaries and hours for teaching physicians, residents, and certified registered nurse anesthetists. |
|
June 2001 |
Improving payment for inpatient hospital care in rural areas (D)To ensure accurate input-price adjustments in Medicare’s prospective payment systems, the Secretary should reevaluate current assumptions about the proportions of providers’ costs that reflect resources purchased in local and national markets. |
|
June 2001 |
Improving payment for inpatient hospital care in rural areas (E)The Congress should raise the cap on the disproportionate share add-on a rural hospital can receive from 5.25 percent to 10 percent. |
|
June 2001 |
Improving payment for inpatient hospital care in rural areas (F)The Congress should revise the target cap for inpatient psychiatric facilities in a way that better addresses differences among them. |
|
June 2001 |
Accounting for new technology in hospital prospective payment systems (A)In the outpatient payment system, pass-through payments for specific technologies should be made only when a technology is new or substantially improved and adds substantially to the cost of care in an ambulatory payment classification group. |
|
March 2001 |
Accounting for new technology in hospital prospective payment systems (B)In the outpatient payment system, the Secretary should develop formalized procedures for expeditiously assigning codes, updating relative weights, and investigating the need for service classification changes to recognize the costs of new and substantially improved technologies. |
|
March 2001 |
Accounting for new technology in hospital prospective payment systems (C)Pass-through payments in the outpatient payment system should be made on a budget-neutral basis and the costs of new or substantially improved technologies should be factored into the update to the outpatient conversion factor. |
|
March 2001 |