Earlier this week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed to change the way it pays Medicare reimbursements to hospitals. CMS seeks to encourage higher quality of care in hospitals by rewarding those that meet a certain threshold. To fund the “incentive payment pool,” CMS will cut payments by a flat rate of 2 percent to 5 percent.
The American Hospital Association (AHA) has responded to CMS’s proposal. Noting that the changes could create financial problems, AHA senior vice president Tom Nickels told CQ Health Beat: “Two to five percent reduction in hospital payments [is] a significant cut, and there’s a lot of uncertainty in how that money is returned to the system or if that money is returned to the system. Ultimately, we would prefer a pool of new money, additional resources being provided…”
