fah hospital policy blog

“A fresh take on health care is certainly called for and Adam brings that to this new and important position. He has been an actual innovator in health care, working in the real world, looking for new ways to serve patients and their families better as well as making caregiving more efficient and effective.

Today, the Federation of American Hospitals (FAH) submitted comments to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) FY 2019 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) proposed rule. The FAH’s comments were highlighted by responses to CMS’s proposals on Medicare Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) payments, payments for new and costly CAR T-Cell therapy, CMS’s quality and payment reporting programs, interoperability, long-term care hospital policies, and price transparency.

The cumulative reductions in federal payments to hospitals since 2010 will reach $218.2 billion by 2028, according to a report released today by the health economics consulting firm Dobson | DaVanzo and Associates.

Late last week, the FAH submitted comments to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) on a Request for Information (RFI) it issued on a Direct Provider Contracting (DPC) model it is considering. The DPC RFI outlines a new type of model where CMS suggests it could contract directly with participating physician practices to establish those practices as the main source of care for primary care or other services for beneficiaries that voluntarily enroll. CMS considers the use of a fixed per beneficiary per month payment to cover the cost of these services with the expectation that the contracted physician practice would provide those services in a manner agreeable to both CMS and the physician practice.