On March 18, 2014, the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees unveiled draft legislation, the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014 (IMPACT Act), designed to strengthen Medicare’s post-acute care (PAC) services. Issued as a result of feedback from healthcare stakeholders who underscored their need for uniform data, the goal of the draft legislation is to institute a standardized post-acute assessment tool across Medicare PAC provider settings.
Highlights of the IMPACT Act include:
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Reporting of standardized assessment data – reporting across PAC providers of standardized assessment data to be used for patient assessment, quality comparisons, resource use measurement, and payment reform;
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Hospital reporting of patient assessment data gathered prior to discharge;
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Reports with goal of building new payment models – reports to Congress from MedPAC and HHS utilizing PAC assessment data for the creation of actual payment models to be considered for future PAC payment reforms; and
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Protection of patient choice and access – development of regulations encouraging the use of quality data in discharge planning while continuing to take into account patient choice.
A summary of the draft bill is available here.
Reporter, Katy Lucas, Atlanta, +1 404 572 2822, klucas@kslaw.com.
Correction – We have corrected an error in the article we published last week titled “CMS Extends Deadline for Low-Volume Hospitals and the Medicare-Dependent Hospital Program.” Please click here to access the corrected version.
